Underscoring the great rivalries of world sport is historical context. Elevating the competitive tryst of two athletes, two teams or two nations are the political or cultural environs that inform the contest. A game of water polo 15,000 kilometres away from a revolution; a football match 19 years after an Islamic revolution; a 100m final raced under the imposing béton eaves of the Olympiastadion.
That Australia and England share a long, often fun, often fraught sporting rivalry has been well documented, and it remains at the core of Australian-Great British Olympic enmity.
Old adversaries clashing in a rugby union match in 2016 draw significance from a humiliating defeat at Twickenham just one year prior. Echoes of a drop goal 13 years previous still haunt or illuminate the narrative. A knock on, deliberate or otherwise, from a final 25 years ago demands to still be remembered.
Australia v England is a relationship that’s evolved with every on-field chapter – heroic, unjust or just downright undignified – but always anchored in the shared history, awful and wonderful, of post-settlement Australia. The shame of invasion is England’s alone, but Australia’s ongoing failure to reconcile with its troubled past is its own making.
Condescension characterised early encounters with the wild colonials, these rough-hewn figures from the Antipodes. That disgraceful chapter, Bodyline, became not just a marker for sporting nadir but also the collapse of naivety following the adventure of the Great War – a re-emergence into a more cynical, brutalised world.
If the larrikinism of Australia in the 1970s or 80s was captured by a moustachioed Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh or Merv Hughes, then the pervasive managerialism of modern cash-flush sport could equally be characterised by the cool, grinding success of Britain’s Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins or Chris Froome.
Competition between two nations – so historically intertwined that the mutual fixation approaches narcissism – has been at times fierce, at times friendly; at times sporting, at times spiteful.
In an Olympic context, as two of only four nations that have competed at every modern Games, the rivalry between Australia and an increasingly disunified Great Britain becomes far more complex.
As the Bedouin proverb tells us: “I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.”
England’s history with the Scottish, Welsh or the Northern Irish as we know could be euphemistically described as “chequered”. And whereas at the Commonwealth (née Empire) Games the memories of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd or the Battle of Culloden might be summonsed to stoke national pride, at the Olympics, “temperamental Scot” Andy Murray morphs into a “British champion” and Welsh wizard Ryan Giggs solves England’s decade-long problem on the left-hand side of midfield.
But to paraphrase a line Muhammad Ali apparently never actually uttered, no Welshman ever called me convict.
That, historically, Australia holds no great antipathy for the Welsh, the Scottish or the Northern Irish, is of utterly no consequence once the clans unite under the banner of Great Britain.
Ignoring that the flag still features prominently as part of our own (Australians are pretty good at ignoring distasteful facts), at the Olympics both sides can happily assume as cousins that we stand now as sworn rivals.
In 116 years of modern Olympics, Great Britain has won 236 gold medals, Australia 142.
Technically, three of Australia’s golds came whilst competing under a shared banner with New Zealand as Australasia in 1908 and 1912, but we’re happy to never again mention that whole sordid chapter.
For the British, this might be the only headline statistic you require. When cornered over the next month by boastful Australian backpackers at the local branch of Walkabout, just cite this.
For Australian audiences however, it is worth scratching a little deeper.
While the modern Olympics have no doubt altered greatly from their ancient namesake, there is a pretty solid case to argue that there are modern and ancient eras even within the modern Olympics.
Contrast the post-World War II era with its increasingly sophisticated training regimes and techniques and the endearing amateurism of the early games.
Ahh, the good old days when merely hosting an Olympics was the sole prerequisite for success. Where only the tiny Benelux nations failed to finish on the podium of their own games, and even Sweden finished one gold shy of top in Stockholm 1912.
This is in no way to discredit the record 56 gold medals Great Britain won at the London 1908 games. Winning every available medal for tug of war and rackets was merely testament to the host’s extreme proficiency in these respected and popular disciplines. And if Bohemia, Canada and Hungary were unable to prevent Great Britain from winning 15 of 18 medals in tennis, it was presumably not for want of trying.
Sure, the churlish might point out the British contingent of 676 constituted one-in-three of all athletes at the Games, but the acclaim won there nevertheless still warrants celebrating.
The medal split pre-and-post-World War II therefore reads: 119 gold for Great Britain and 14 for Australia before, and 117 for Great Britain and 128 for Australia after.
No surprise perhaps that competitions not immediately preceded by a three-month steam boat voyage seemed to favour Australian athletes slightly better.
Informing the Australian-Great Britain Olympic rivalry of most people’s lived history however are more recent events. Both have suffered ignominious capitulations – Australians don’t talk about Montreal 1976 as much as the British don’t talk about Atlanta 1996.
Sydney 2000 was almost as resounding a success for Australians as London 2012 was for the British – and so a very modern era of the rivalry emerges.
With neither especially adept historically at gymnastics, diving or badminton, disciplines such as cycling, rowing, sailing, equestrian or hockey become the sites of fiercest contestation.
The Australian men’s pursuit team may have won gold at the track cycling World Championships in five of the last seven years, but when it mattered the most, at London 2012, they were blown away by a world-record breaking British team.
With seven golds in the velodrome at London 2012, British champions such as Laura Trott and Jason Kenny will ride with targets on their backs, as the Australian team pulls out all stops to surpass the benchmark.
Victoria Pendleton and Anna Meares will not take to the track together and face off in Rio, but the memory of their clashes will still linger.
On horseback, the British remain equestrian royalty (in some cases, literally); and at Eton Dorney British women led the field in rowing, to the chagrin of the gold-less Australians.
At any other given moment these two proud sporting nations may well combine against the rest. But for three weeks in August it will be brothers against cousins, as a weight of history bubbles once again to the fore.
