Part 3 of the Our Manly Series on Northern Beaches Olympians

Clontarf’s

Glenn Bourke

This is the third in a series of feature stories The Drum is running on local Olympians… and as a follow-up to last month’s story, it features the ‘junior partner’ of a father/son Olympic duo, Glenn Bourke. Glenn’s dad, Bruce represented Australia as a swimmer in London in 1948. A three-time world sailing champion, Glenn competed in Barcelona in 1992.

– Dave Keogh

Given his dad Bruce was an Olympic swimmer, Glenn naturally started his sporting life in the pool. With Bruce as Coach and mum Jenny cheering from the pool deck, Glenn and his sister Christie formed their own two-person squad.  “Dad would usually stay dry and call out stroke correction from above, but occasionally he’d dive in and train with us at the old tidal Manly Baths - now the Manly 16ft Skiff Club,” said Glenn.

“From time to time he’d let us win a sprint or a kicking race, just to get the competitive juices flowing. It was good, simple family fun in a simple era and even though I hated the random blue bottle stings and the bump coming from the ferry wake, I have fond memories of those special times.”

Apparently Christie was the more enthusiastic swimmer though… Glenn remembers she couldn’t wait to hit the pool, while he would often pray for rain or look for some other reason to postpone training. But the Bourke gene pool runs deep and even given the training sessions he managed to skip, Glenn still swam well enough to win school and district championships and even made a few finals at State level.

But clearly his heart wasn't really in it, whereas in winter it was a different matter when football ruled. “I was always rearing to go when it came to footy training,” says Glenn. Then when he was about 10 years of age, a good mate from his footy team asked if he’d like to sail as forward hand in his Manly Junior on the weekends.

“It didn't take very long or too many sessions before I was completely hooked. It seems I’d found ‘my thing’ (or perhaps it had found me?). Either way, from that point on there wasn't much else that captivated my waking moments (often to the detriment of homework and household chores!)”

Glenn continued to swim competitively and play both codes of rugby and managed to get into Manly District Teams in both Union and League. (The way he tells it, those selections had more to do with his enthusiasm rather than any great skill.)  When he was 12, Glenn decided to sit his father down and have a ‘man-to-man’ with him. “I managed to pluck up the courage to tell him it was time he cut me loose to do my own thing… and after he’d absorbed that setback to his aspirations for me as a swimmer, I asked if he’d mind very much buying me my first boat - a Flying Ant!”

At the time, Bruce was enjoying racing his own 16ft skiff with Middle Harbour 16's Club, so he understood his son’s passion and came to the party. Not long after and with only a few months of competitive racing experience under his belt, Bruce asked his son if he’d like to have a go at skippering his boat when he wasn't racing elsewhere in ‘the Ant’.

“Dad’s boat was an old clunker, never going to win anything but a handicap race, but sailing it was a great experience for me and another step towards whetting my appetite for this sport.”

As Glenn wandered around the various sailing clubs on the harbour, it became apparent that sailing was a sport where equipment and commitment were the keys. He figured there was no better way to succeed than to build and sail his own boats, training whenever he wanted and reducing his dependence on others. So on leaving school he started a boat-building apprenticeship with John McConnaghy.

Around that time he joined the Seaforth Moth Club where a small nucleus of keen young sailors competed hard against each other, yet enjoyed an open think-tank environment that led to discussions on anything from boat design, to sail shapes, to rules… all of which accelerated Glenn’s learning process. It was through this small club that Glenn met Ian Brown who had also started as a Moth sailor, but taken his skills to a much higher arena in the 470 Class – in fact to a Bronze medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. 

Ian had recently decided to move up from the smaller 470 to the Flying Dutchman Class. In fact as luck would have it, he had started to build his first F.D. at McConnaghy’s. The two became friends and decided to team up and together aim for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.

The Moscow Fiasco

Ian Brown had the experience… he'd taken Bronze in Montreal. Glenn really wasn't big enough to be the perfect forward hand in an F.D. but desperately wanted to make it to Moscow. So he ate his head off for the next few months and did weights as often as possible, heading to the gym every night after work. Slowly but surely the weight started to come and with it, the extra strength he’d need to be an Olympian. The two friends worked on finishing their boat every spare minute they had… and when that was done, the real hard work started… on the water.

The Moscow Olympic Selection trials were held on Botany Bay late in the in the summer of 1980. “Mark Peelgrane, a fierce competitor on the water but an amazingly helpful bloke on land, was the rival we expected would give us our biggest problem… and that’s the way it turned out”, said Glenn. “The week before the Olympic Trials, Mark won the F.D. Australian Championship, but after a titanic battle in the Trials, Ian and I were able to lift our game and reverse the placings.

“So at 19 years of age I’d qualified for my first Olympics and Brownie his second. Dad had also been 19 when he made the team for London way back in 1948, so this was of extra special importance to me… almost the continuation of a dynasty.”

For most of us, the thrill of Olympic selection will never be experienced, but can be easily imagined. It’s just reward for a long period of intense effort and deep dedication, mixed with that self-doubt as to whether you are going to be good enough to qualify on the day.  Of course in the Bourke household, the pressure Glenn put on himself would have been that little bit more intense and the reward even sweeter than for other newly crowned Olympians.

“It's not that anybody imposes the pressure of expectation… you crave selection like anybody else, but you know it would be extra special if the family could represent from one generation to the next. I hate to think what pressure that might place on my kids one day. At the same time I admit I sometimes find myself daydreaming, just quietly to myself: Wouldn't it be nice if...

“Dad and I were emotionally very close in the immediate aftermath of winning selection. It seemed almost too good to be true… and in retrospect it was!”  In fact weeks and months of downside were to follow in what was the greatest disappointment of Glenn’s young life.

In December 1979, Russia had invaded Afghanistan. As an athlete, Glenn didn’t consider for a moment that this would have any impact on his going to the Games. As he said: “I figured sport and politics don't mix, right? Rumours aside, there was no way we’d be used as political pawns to throw down the gauntlet to the Russians, surely? Hasn't happened before, why should it now?” 

But after much media speculation, the then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser did just that. He and his Government decided to give financial incentives to those sporting bodies who decided not to send their athletes to the Games. “In a sport like sailing that is high on costs and low on funding, which alternative do you think they would take?” asked Glenn. “The conversation was over before it started! The crazy thing was that at least 50% of the sports decided to send their athletes, so Australia did go to the Moscow Games… but I didn’t.”

Neither the Russians nor the Afghanis felt any political impact from Mr Fraser’s actions… but many young Australians had their dreams crushed and missed out on the biggest moment of their lives because of this half-baked call by the Government.

“I had to get used to it… no Moscow… no Olympics… no chance at glory… nothing. I had to wait 12 years and do it all over again before I could call myself an Olympian… but I was luckier than many others who never again received that chance.”

Tour de France?

This experience left Glenn deflated and disillusioned for some time. “I didn't want to go sailing at all. I'd always been tempted to take up cycling, so I figured now was as good a time as ever to get started. The Tour de France had real athletic appeal for me and there was a very good road-racing club operating on Saturday mornings from in front of the old drive-in theatre at Warriewood… so I bought a bike and signed up.

“I was convinced by a mate to get into road racing and for a couple of years I enjoyed keen competition and great company riding against the likes of Mark Dragan (an elite triathlete) and Sean Vale (who is still fully involved in the sport through his Bike Addiction outlet at Queenscliff). Cycling taught me a lot about competition… and training and fitness. In fact it made me a much better sailor than I would have been otherwise, because it taught me how to suffer and push yourself and never give up even when you are hurting.”

Glenn had many very testing rides over those years, which culminated in him winning the Road Race Championship of the Manly-Warringah Cycle Club.  “At the time this felt more important to me than even Olympic Selection,” said Glenn.

Even though he really enjoyed his new sport, the feeling wasn’t shared to the same extent by Glenn’s two most supportive fans. “Both mum and dad were worried about the risk of spending large amounts of my time as a ‘Roadie’ and were more than anxious for ‘the cycling era’ to end. Mum especially kept quietly plugging away, trying to rekindle the fires for sailing that had burned so brightly pre-Moscow. Eventually this ‘water on a rock’ approach started to take effect. I knew deep inside that I would never be as good a cyclist as I had been a sailor and the appeal of getting back into a small single-handed boat was strengthening once more.

 “I was still keeping abreast of what was happening in sailing and it seemed to me that the Laser Class had a lot to recommend it. In the shortest time, this class of boat had shown itself to be well designed, affordable and quickly growing in popularity worldwide.  So with encouragement from mum, I bought a second-hand Laser as a ‘toe-in-the-water’ start to see if I was ready to get back into sailing and if this was the right boat for me.

“I took myself down to Middle Harbour Amateur Laser Club and there found a solid and growing club with an elite nucleus of very good skippers who were at the top of the heap nationally - Warwick Phillips, Mike Stovin-Bradford, Robbie Douglas et al. Just like at the Seaforth Moths, these were guys who would compete hard and fair, but in the aftermath to hard racing they’d share their thoughts, analyse techniques, openly discuss tactics and have everything out in the open. In hindsight I am sure it's the best kind of coaching. It lifts the standard of the whole fleet. I didn't know it at the time, but the racing I was getting with that group was preparing me for my first shot at a World Championship.”

The America's Cup

I'd known Iain Murray since my earliest sailing years. When he was chosen by Kevin Parry to put together the Kookaburra Challenge for The America’s Cup in 1987, he gave me the opportunity to come to Fremantle and try out for a place in the crew. I made the boat.

Probably more than any other factor, that experience gave me an insight into how penetratingly thorough any campaign that aims high and aims to succeed, has got to be.  Doesn't matter if it's a small one-man dinghy, or an ocean going ‘round-the-worlder’, the boat has to be right, the body has to be right and the mind has to be right.   I'm hugely indebted to the Kookaburra experience for giving me my first look at professional thoroughness.

From January 31 to February 4, 1987, the Kookas raced Dennis Connor's Stars and Stripes off Fremantle, Western Australia over a 24.1 nautical mile triangular course with windward-leeward loops. The gap with Stars & Stripes was close at the finish of each race, (from one minute and 10 seconds minimum to one minute and 59 seconds maximum) but the Americans were too good and maintained the Auld Mug.

World Titles

In 1988 Glenn won the Australian Laser Title on Lake Macquarie and then decided to enter the World Championships to be conducted at Falmouth in the UK later that year.  To properly prepare, he went to Europe early in the Euro Summer and honed up by competing in the French, Dutch, Belgian and English Titles as a build-up to the Worlds. 

Al McClure, a fine Victorian sailor who had contested the previous Worlds in Melbourne, was planning a similar programme, so the two decided to team up – a decision Glenn ranks as among the best he’s ever made. “Al and I trained very hard… didn't waste a day. He was a terrific training partner on the water and a great and solid friend.”

The French Championships were first up in Europe, held that year in Lorient. Glenn’s sister Christie was playing tennis on the Satellite Circuit that year… (what a family!) … and as she was based in the small French town of Mont la Jolie, just 80 kms. from the  regatta site, she decided to pay Glenn a surprise visit… a piece of luck that amazingly paved the way for Glenn’s second national title.

“Je ne parle pas français”

With some 250 entrants, the French Laser Association decided to divide the fleet into four separate divisions starting 10 minutes apart.   Glenn was drawn in B Fleet and in the 1st heat got a clear break and sailed away from his competitors and soon started picking up and passing the tail-enders from A Fleet.  “In fact as I came up the final beat to the finish line, I was about half way into A Fleet… and that's the position that the judges in the finishing boat awarded me!”

“Bourke (Australie) 34^th.”

Glenn approached the judges in an effort to have this error rectified but was told: "Mais non Monsieur…  all protests must be in writing in French."  In his best Aussie accent he told Monsieur that he didn't speak French, but was again advised that: “This is the French Championships and all submissions to the Protest Committee, including your personal address in explanation must be in French.”   

At this stage Glenn was fuming and delivering some fairly strong Australian phrases, when he heard a very familiar voice say:  "How's my darling big brother going and why are you sounding so homicidal?"   

Showing impeccable timing, Christie appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She was pretty comfortable speaking French and once she understood her brother’s dilemma, was able to write and lodge his protest and to speak on his behalf to the Protest Committee. Glenn’s proper placing in the Heat was restored and soon after, Christie had a queue of Aussies, POMs and Yanks all begging for her translation services.

Glenn went on to win the French, Belgian and Dutch Nationals that year and capped off the European summer with the first of his World Laser Titles in Falmouth, U.K. He repeated the dose the following year in Denmark and then again in Newport, Rhode Island in 1990.

Back to that Olympic Dream

The Laser Class had not been accepted as an Olympic class at that time and Glenn still had a deep-seated desire to be an Olympian… so he decided try to make the transition to the Finn Class - a bigger single-handed dinghy that ideally needs a heavier helmsman… so it was back to the ‘eat and pump iron’ routine.

“If I was going to make the team for Barcelona '92, I would need to race the European Finn Circuit in '91 to get sufficient "feel" for the boat in all types of weather and then be ready to race the Olympic Trials back in Australia in the Summer of '92. Despite my success with Lasers, I found I wasn't as fast in the Finn and I had a lot of things to re-learn and adjust to.”   

Glenn tells me the Finn is a beautiful dinghy to sail… IF you're the right weight to get the best out of the boat and IF you can work out what is needed to make your boat competitive across the wind range from light air through to heavy. As his performances improved over two years of sailing the Finn, it became obvious that he had a good handle on strong wind performance… and though he still struggled to come to terms with light breezes, he duly won selection in the Australian team to compete in Barcelona.

Russia wasn’t invading any country that year, so his chances of officially joining his dad as an Olympian were good.

In the Finn Gold Cup (the World Championship for the class) in Cadiz, just a couple of weeks before the Olympics, he finished 2^nd in a regatta that featured all the Olympic entrants. This result buoyed his hopes big time… after all, there were over a hundred boats competing in the Worlds and he’d finished 2^nd… he’d only have to face 27 starters in the Olympics. All he needed for a fair shot at Gold was the right conditions.      

As Rudyard Kipling said: "If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same… you’ll be a man, my son." It could have been Bruce speaking to Glenn.

In the final pre-Olympic regatta in Poland, Glenn slipped in the boat and tore the medial ligaments in his knee.  He saw a specialist in Germany who designed a reticulated brace that allowed him to compete in Barcelona. But fate continued to conspire against him. The wind dropped to near nothing right throughout the Olympic Regatta. Two knots was the norm; 5 knots was a blow! An Olympic medal eluded the Triple World Champion. “To say that Barcelona was a bitter disappointment is almost an understatement… but at least I’d continued the dynasty and become an Olympian,” said Glenn.

The America's Cup 1995

In 1995, John Bertrand was putting together a syndicate for another tilt at the Auld Mug and asked if Glenn would like to try his hand as tactician... he quickly accepted this two-year challenge. Team New Zealand came up with a breakthrough boat that was fast from the moment she was floated.  ‘The Black Boat’ with Russell Coutts as skipper only suffered one defeat… and that was one that Glenn’s One Australia inflicted on her.

“Unfortunately our One Australia broke in two in steep choppy seas shortly after that win and went to the bottom… and our 2^nd boat wasn't quite on the pace. Team N.Z went on to win the Challenger Series and then backed it up by taking the Cup from Dennis Connor.

“I came home from the U.S. and the disappointment of the America's Cup to a hometown that was just starting to gear itself up to host the Greatest Show In Sport - Sydney 2000.   My timing could not have been better… I was appointed Sailing Venue and Competition Manager for the Games.

“There was so much to be done, from choosing the best venues to playing host nation in pre-Olympic build-up regattas aimed at introducing the world’s sailors to the courses and conditions they’d encounter at the Olympics. We also had to build the infrastructure and find the officials and support crews to make the world's biggest regatta operate on cue and smoothly.   This was the most challenging change of direction of my life, but incredibly fulfilling.     

“The S.O.C.O.G. hierarchy under Sandy Hollway were the ultimate ‘get it done’ executives, an eye-opener for a guy on his L-Plates in this field. It was a learn-fast experience and I'll always respect the nucleus of that team who were the driving force behind what has been widely praised as the most spectacular sailing regatta in Olympic history. High among my most treasured possessions is the I.O.C. 's Golden Rings Certificate presented to me by Juan Antonio Samaranch on 1^st October 2000.”  

Since Sydney 2000, Glenn has been living in England running the Volvo Round the World Yacht Race.  He got back into sailing in the six-man crew 1720 class and continued on his winning way adding British and European Titles to his long list of achievements. He then moved to a new design 3-man craft that’s taking off like wildfire in England and Europe - the Laser SB3. He bought one for himself and subsequently won two more British Championships, the Europeans in this class and Cowes Week, which is the biggest regatta in England.

The SB3 is yet to take off in Australia so Glenn has once more ‘retired’ from racing, this time returning home to take on a new job as CEO of Hamilton island, which will enable him to spend more time with his kids, daughter Bailey aged 11 and son Mitchell, 9, rather than spending literally two-thirds of the year on a plane as he did in 2007.    

So with the Games of the XXIX Olympiad kicking off this week, how does he see our chances in the sailing in Beijing?

“I think Australia has a very promising sailing team in China and it’s good to see a strong northern beaches contingent again.  The northern beaches have supplied a few sailing legends, among them Bill Northam who in 1964 in Tokyo was old enough to be nicknamed "Papa-san". Along with young guns Dick Sargeant and Pod O'Donnell, Bill won the Gold Medal in the 5.5 class in Tokyo. 

“In Beijing, my thoughts, hopes and best wishes (in fact, those of the whole Bourke Family) will be with the 2008 version of "Papa- san". My old mate Iain Murray, along with Andrew Palfrey, will again go into battle for Australia, this time in the Star Class. I’d love to see history repeat and so hope there's a place on the victory dais for ‘the Big Fella’.”

Thanks for the memories Glenn.