It seems barely conceivable, given her meteoric rise into the Australian public’s consciousness but, as Chloe Esposito reflects on the whirlwind that has been her life since winning gold for Australia at the Olympic Games, the modern pentathlete admits to a large hole in an otherwise tremendously fulfilling 2016.
“At the moment I don’t have a sponsor,” she tells Guardian Australia, far away from the spotlight of Rio, back at her family home in the western Sydney suburb of Casula. “I’ve had a whole bunch of people coming to me saying they wanted to do something but nothing has gone through just yet. I don’t know why.”
On the face of it, the situation does indeed appear baffling. Here is a supremely talented athlete, skilled not just in one sport, but the five different disciplines that make up modern pentathlon – fencing, swimming, show jumping, pistol shooting and cross-country running. She won gold at the Rio Games, thrillingly so in the run and shoot, coming from a way behind to clinch victory in a stirring finale to the competition. In doing so she marked herself out as one of, if not the best, woman in the world in her sport.
Esposito is just 25 but talks with a maturity that belies her age. That said, an infectious enthusiasm still shines through and it’s not difficult to see why she has become an inspiration to many girls and young women in sport. And then there is the omnipresent smile – the kind of smile a marketeer dreams about – that only disappears once during the course of the interview, when she’s told to ditch it by the photographer for a more serious shot.
Yet heading into 2017, one of Australia’s best – and arguably most marketable – athletes is without a commercial sponsor and the extra financial backing that would otherwise be spent on essential equipment, competition entry, travel and accommodation. It’s a sobering state of affairs and one that has been a wake-up call for Esposito.
“I thought that as soon as you’re a gold medallist you’re going to get all this sponsorship and everyone’s going to want you on their television adverts, but that’s not the case,” she says. The shiny red Audi sitting outside on the driveway is the only spoil of her Olympic campaign, a gift from a dealership in Canberra.
The lack of a committed sponsor has left Esposito looking at other ways of making money to help fund her sporting career. It’s not a unique situation for young Olympic athletes by any stretch, and at least Esposito has the experience of winning a gold medal to help her out – she is in demand on the public speaking circuit and has given several talks at corporate events and schools since returning from Rio. It’s something she says she enjoys – but of course it is just a means to an end.
Otherwise, she has been putting in one or two shifts a week at the local shooting range, behind the counter, taking money, selling ammo or teaching, and she also helps out at the family-run swim school located at the back of the house whenever she can.
Esposito was part of the Winning Edge funding program and she has also benefited from Australian Olympic Committee money – with the prospect of another windfall in January – but it is her parents who have, to date, borne the brunt of the financial burden commensurate with raising two Olympic athletes (her younger brother Max also went to Rio and competed in the men’s modern pentathlon).
Esposito is quick to point out there has never been a moment of complaint from either parent, but she is uncomfortable with the status quo. “The amount of money Mum and Dad have spent is insane,” she says. “Now I’ve made a promise to myself: I don’t want Mum and Dad to put their hand in their pocket again.”
Hardly the cliched life of a superstar athlete, then, but despite the disappointment such is Esposito’s breezy outlook on life, it is not something she is likely to dwell on. “I’m sure eventually something will happen and it doesn’t happen overnight, which is completely fine. A lot of people say, perhaps closer to the Olympics that’s when things start to happen.”
When asked to describe the past 12 months she has just experienced in one word, she responds: “Crazy.” She says her life now is “completely different” to when nobody outside the relatively enclosed world of modern pentathlon really knew about her, yet perhaps unsurprisingly her feet remain firmly on the ground.
“I was in my own little bubble in my training and sporting world,” she says. “Now coming home [after Rio], a lot more people know about modern pentathlon and about me. I’m still the same person but I think everything else around me has changed.
“I’m really lucky, because Dad has brought us up not to be big headed. I’m still the same as everyone else, but just with all this action happening around me. I don’t think anything better of myself, I’m still the same.”
The mention of her father is telling. Daniel, himself a former Olympic modern pentathlete, is the driving force behind Team Esposito and a constant source of inspiration for Chloe and Max. A bricklayer by trade – he built the swim school himself – Daniel appeared at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles but now focuses most of his time and energy on coaching his offspring.
He oversaw an extended training camp with the pair in Hungary – where modern pentathlon enjoys a higher profile and markedly better facilities than in Australia – two years out from the Games in Rio. The experience overseas, where at Honved sports club in Budapest Chloe honed her fencing and riding skills, set her on a course that would end in glory in Brazil. “He played a massive, massive role,” she says.
“He made training for us as easy as possible. The training sessions were very hard, obviously, and he was very tough, but he’d work out when we had to peak, how much we had to do. He’d be thinking overtime so we’d just have to rock up to the session, train our guts out and that was it.”
The wider importance of family is immediately apparent on arriving at the Espositos’ home. Mother Suzanne answers the door before she disappears to take a kids’ class in the pool, while sister Emily sits at a table on a computer and Daniel potters about in the background. Nineteen-year-old Max is the only family member not present – he is away learning about “what it’s like in the real world”, sent by his father to work on a farm in Victoria.
It’s another clear ploy to keep his kids grounded when both have the world at their feet – Max, who Chloe says has never had a “proper” job, finished seventh in Rio and, had he got one more hit in the fencing, he would have claimed bronze; three more and he would have matched his sister’s gold.
If he maintains his upward trajectory, Max may yet deliver a second Olympic gold to the family. Certainly his sister believes in him. “He’s very positive and not much fazes him,” Chloe says. “He finished in seventh place in Rio; I finished seventh in London. I’m hoping that’s a sign. He trains so hard and he deserves something great to happen.”
If it does, Max will soon realise, just as his sister has, that there are many trappings that come with such a rise to fame. Corporate types in suits offering bumper cheques may not be banging down Chloe’s door just yet, but public interest, at least, has skyrocketed since Rio. She now gets recognised in the street. Invitations to gala dinners are plentiful. And she gets the best seats in the house to watch events like the Melbourne Cup.
“It is really lovely when people come up to me,” she says of her newfound fame. “They’re taking time out of their day to congratulate me or ask for a photo. It didn’t really hit me until I got off the charter flight back home and we had all these cameras in our faces. It just really hit me then, when I was being pulled around everywhere.”
Her rising popularity was rubber-stamped early this month when she was voted by the public as Australia’s sports personality of the year at the AIS Sport Performance awards, while she made ESPN’s list of the 10 most influential women in Australian sport just before Christmas as well as being named ABC’s sports personality of the year. All are fitting accolades to bookend what has been an extraordinary year for her but, tellingly, they also serve to highlight the incongruity of one of Australia’s most popular and influential athletes having to continue to make her way without the financial backing of a sponsor.
It’s the one thing 2016 failed to deliver but Esposito is determined not to let the situation distract her from her next major target: the 2020 Games in Tokyo, where she will have to deal with the added pressure that comes from being a reigning Olympic champion.
“A lot of people are going to expect from me [now] whereas this Games [in Rio] I had no pressure at all,” she says. “I’m going to go into the next Games, if I qualify, train my guts out and just do what I can do on the day. I can’t do any more than that, I’ll give it my best and whatever happens happens.
“If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be and if it’s not, it’s not. I know I’ve done the work.”
