Impact on Pilots

I, like all the womens’ team was stunned to find we had been issued a penalty.  When I found out the basis of the penalty was the access and use of the LiveTrack data I was in disbelief.  I pride myself on making sure I know the rules and always work completely within them, no matter what I am involved in.  I had personally checked all the rules and satisfied myself that the use of the data was within the rules and was completely happy to have the information provided by radio to me from that system.  The fact that information was being given to us by radio was consistent with the rules.  Additionally, we were using the Australian frequency (and of course using English) and understood the information would have been also easily heard and used by all teams monitoring the Australian frequency.  Being the ‘home team’ we knew we would be monitored and were sure that at least five teams were listening on our frequency.

My motivation for becoming so involved in establishing an appeal for the Penalty is my longstanding deep sense of justice and fairness.  From the very first notification of the penalty, the lack of investigation process, the accusatory approach, and a Jury process that was not valid, I wanted to get our voice heard, and thought (erroneously) that an independent appeal would find that we had not conducted ourselves in an unsporting manner.  I had previously assisted the Australian team in Poland where my sole duty was to monitor the OGN and weather and provide information to the pilots via radio, as were all the teams.  It was obvious to me and others at that time that the bigger European teams were using private OGN and had significant advantages over the small, under-resourced and under-funded Australian team.  So, you can see that my experience told me that tracking processes were widely used and more sophisticated and private for some teams.

From the beginning, the team was vilified.  We had very little support anywhere.  We couldn’t’ tell our story for fear of influencing the appeal process.  Little did we know it was biased and doomed from the beginning.  We even paid for our own appeal because the GFA at the time (who also never bothered to ask us or interview us about the competition penalty issues) would not financially or morally support our appeal.

I have spent many hundreds of hours over the last two years working with 5 of the other women pilots and Paul Matthews trying to get justice – to at least to get a proper independent review and investigation. To be called a cheat is the ultimate insult – anyone who knows me and the other team pilots know this is not a characteristic of any of us has ever displayed.  A successful appeal would not have influenced my overall standing in the competition by any amount, but I would have felt that ‘wrongs’ had been ‘righted’.  When, through a stroke of bad fate/action from our solicitor, our second appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport missed the submission deadline by 6 hours it closed the door to further appeal.  This further devastated us.  It will take some time to come to terms with the fact that FAI never maintained any semblance of impartiality and hung the Australian team out to dry.

The last day

On the last day of the competition the gliders were set on the grid while a decision as to whether to fly was being made. Jo Davis in first place in Club Class sat in her glider and I further back in the grid remained next to my glider fully expecting the day to be cancelled. I noticed that it was hard to have a chat with anyone and in hindsight realise that people were avoiding me. I assumed they were focused.

When the call was made that the competition had finished, I was standing near Jo Davis ready to run over and congratulate her and absolutely thrilled at my own achievement of third place. At that point I was stopped by my husband who told me that we had been penalised enough to remove us both from the podium. The experience was shock but hope that the misunderstanding would be sorted out soon with an appeal. I was aware the day before or so that some questions were asked about the tracking data the team were using, but I saw no problem and no rule broken. I was not aware at that stage that there had been an accusation that the data had been gained illicitly.

The deflation was profound after a three year campaign of training, the time away from family, friends and work, plus the financial sacrifice. All to give myself the best possible chance of doing well for myself, my team and my country. This was one of many campaigns for national and international competitions – gliding was a core part of my life. But I still had hope that it would be sorted out when an independent jury had a good look at the accusations and saw they were baseless. Little did I know that we would never get a fair hearing.

I also didn’t know that there was a lynching mob rising which comprised a group of team captains spurred on by an emotional outcry of claims of cheating. While some individuals in this group might be nice and reasonable people, none of them actually investigated the claim of illicit access to data which their outrage was based on. I made an attempt to tell one member of the competition organisation that we had not done anything wrong and she insisted that there had been hacking and illicit access to data. Everyone seemed convinced. The pilots could not speak.

Our appeal was not upheld by the Jury and I knew that the charge and penalty was not warranted and that our appeal had been subject to a kangaroo court. Meanwhile, I had to face the bitter disappointment of not only having my podium place taken away from me and even worse, seeing the World Champion stripped of her placing, but also of all of us having been unjustly labelled cheats. Nothing could be further from the truth. In support of my fellow pilots, I attended the closing ceremony even though I knew it was very wrong what had happened. I also felt humiliated and disappointed that I had been so betrayed by people I had known, respected and admired for many years -it felt like a tar and feathering.

After the competition

The keyboard warriors and trolls on FB and various forums were quick to give opinions – invariably hurtful untrue accusations. They and others more credible also continued to promote the baseless story of the Australian team cheating. When returning to my club, I asked others what they thought about what had had happened, and while they felt sympathy for us, they believed that cheating had occurred. When I asked them what the cheating actually was, no one could tell me. The word cheat is very powerful and few people looked past this word. Again the pilots could not speak. We could not give our side of the story because we did not want to interfere with an appeal to the FAI.

The next major blow and surprise was the concerted attempt by people with vested interests to stop an appeal to FAI. In particular, a letter from a member of the IGC Bureau, which included the threat of withdrawing the WGC2023 at Narromine, influenced the GFA not to support the appeal. After some objection to this, the GFA Board decided that they would allow the pilots to directly request that the Air Sport Australia Confederation lodge an appeal for us. Again, the optimism kicked in and I hoped that once the matter was looked at by an independent panel it would be seen that there was no basis for the penalty. The emotional roller coaster was gaining momentum.

During the appeal

A subgroup of the pilots put in a huge effort to write a fair and balanced appeal backed by facts and references. This appeal was lodged a couple of months after the competition. We hoped it would all be over soon and felt confident that once the facts were seen our appeal would be upheld. I now realise that I was naive in believing that we would receive justice. We knew straight away that there was a problem with the appeal when two of the three members of the panel appointed had a conflict of interest as they were IGC members. This not only compromised the chances of a fair process happening, it also turned out that we were treated with poor regard, as if we were guilty cheats and deceitful. We were treated with hostility, little consideration, negative judgement and arrogance. We initially gave them the benefit of the doubt but later realised that the reasonable information and corrections that we offered would be ignored and that spurious accusations and inflammatory opinions about us were considered acceptable by the panel. This general treatment was very upsetting and direct comments about us trying to hide something or deceive was most hurtful and so far from the truth we just didn’t know what to think.

The prolonged 20 month appeal process stole a lot from my life and has been traumatic – I am just recovering from alopecia now. What has happened has ruined my motivation for competition gliding and my respect for IGC and FAI as organisations and my respect for many individuals in those organisations.

Thinking back on the impact, you would think it would be tempting to say the loss of the World title was a primary impact but in truth, now two years later, I’m not sure it is. Perhaps I’m just a bit numb to it all by now?

The other part of me also says, I’d be World Champion of what exactly. Gee wizz the insight that we’ve had into the workings of the IGC and FAI has not left me proud of the organisations I’d be representing. The open licence for the Brits in particular to pursue Lisa’s bronze medal through whatever means possible in particular makes me wonder how much of an appetite I have for dealing with these people in the future. The unveiled nepotism and acts of self-interest in place of a simple, impartial process has really left me speechless. The double standards of openly allowing live tracking for other teams but throwing their hands up in dismay at the WWGC is triggers eyerolling at best.

I know the trolls and labels of cheating have upset others. I think less so for me. I’m not all that vested in what people think or say about me. If they know me and I respect them then they will know there’s no way I (or any of us) would have acted dishonestly. The people who have been most vocal in that space are bullies and more than a little unstable. So I haven’t lost a lot of sleep from that.

I am sad that my family won’t be able to see my name written into the records as placing first. I’m probably even more sad about the loss of legacy that could have been for women in the sport in Australia. I know what an impact Sue Martin had on my initial drive to compete. But then, in truth, it was the story of Sue Martin. So perhaps not all is lost on that front either. What is lost is the momentum and positivity that could have been drawn out of being able to openly celebrate 9 Aus women flying at a world level and achieving the best team result the country has seen.

The frustrating thing is being surrounded by a cloud of something that is a mix of missed opportunity and pity. I think on how Brad Edwards and Matt Scutter are both regarded and there’s licence to celebrate their achievement. I do feel like people think they need to tip-toe around which is a shame. I hate people approaching the subject with seemingly need to apologise first. Second to that would be how much I hate the conversations around how yes, I placed first, but no I’m not world champion.

The thing I resent most, still now after all this time, is the joy of competing that’s been stolen. I’m still hopeful of reviving that, but that single focused joyful drive to fly as fast as you can possibly fly has taken a very, very big hit. That’s quite something to take from someone I think. Much more so than the time on the podium and medal to frame. That has not been forgiven.

And still now to see the FAI’s attitude and arrogance around their role in this!! They had the perfect opportunity to shut it down. Just run the process with an independent IAT.