00:05 S1
This is Studio 1 on Vision Australia Radio.
00:10 S2
How are you, Jo? I'm all right, mate. Yourself, mate. I'm well, I gotta, I remember that one.
00:22 S3
Hello. I'm Sam...
00:23 S4
And I'm Lizzie.
00:24 S3
And this is Studio 1, your weekly look at life from a low vision and blind point of view here on Vision Australia Radio.
00:29 S4
On this week's show...
00:31 S3
With the Paralympics in full swing, we catch up with two luminaries of the Paralympic movement in Australia: Shayne Allen and Jodi Willis-Roberts are our guests.
00:39 S4
As we always say at this point, please do get in touch with the show whether you have any experience with the issues covered in this week's episode of Studio 1, or whether you think there's something we should be talking about, you never know. Your story and insight may help someone who is dealing with something similar.
00:55 S3
You can email us, studio1@visionaustralia.org - That's studio number one at Vision Australia dot org.
01:00 S4
Or perhaps you can drop us a note. Just look for us and our socials at VA Radio Network.
01:08 S3
Hello, Lizzie.
01:09 S4
Hey, Sam. How are you going?
01:11 S3
Oh, I am pumped. The Paralympics have started.
01:13 S4
Yes. Me too. I've been seeing lots and lots of added on Facebook, and everything's all being hyped up and everyone's excited.
01:22 S3
It's always a funny feeling for me this time. I wouldn't say this time of the year because it happens every four years, but I somehow sort of feel like I'm missing out on something. It's just this sort of funny feeling of, shouldn't I be somewhere?
01:34 S4
Yeah, I get what you mean. I've got a bit of envy to it. I wish I was there, I wish I was at that level, but, alas, maybe one day...
01:43 S3
I'm going to share something with you here, because it was so much a part of my life back in the late 80s and early 90s. And it was really it was just something that... was the essence of who I was and what I was doing at the time. But, you know, when you have those anxiety dreams, you know, you wake up and you're back at school or you've got something like that. Yes. I still get those about the Paralympics. Wow. And what that tends to be is I'm either waking up on a plane or waking up in the Paralympic Village, and it's not the me of then. It's the me of now.
02:20 S4
Oh, no.
02:21 S3
And I've not done a single bit of training and I'm thinking, how did I get here? Oh my God. Everyone's going to be so, so disappointed to see this middle aged guy waddling around the track.
02:34 S4
It's funny that you should say that, actually, because, before any really important bike race, I'll always have this, this dream. And it's the same reoccurring dream. I'm on a recumbent bike now. I don't know, I've never ridden a recumbent bike out on the road. I don't know if recumbent tandems exist, but it's extremely slow going. And it's not until I wake up that I actually remember how to ride a bike properly. It's almost like... I've forgotten any previous knowledge of riding and how to ride a bike in these dreams, and I'm just riding this clunky old recumbent tandem. It's crazy.
03:14 S3
We are joined...
S2
Hang on. I didn't know. I was doing this with Jo. Sorry.
03:18 S4
Well, you do now.
03:22 S2
Come on, Jethro. You'll be right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Keep it up.
03:26 S4
Bit of competition in the studio, folks.
03:29 S2
Still haven't heard the old backstory to... Da da da da da da, anyway...
03:33 S5
Or whatever it was.
03:35 S2
You know what I'm talking about. We'll keep, we'll...
03:39 S3
Yeah, we will keep this PG. I think you've got friendly people. All right. Okay, so we are joined by two luminaries of the throwing world, you might say.
03:50 S4
Lunatics.
03:51 S3
Something like that. Something like that. The legendary Jodi Willis-Roberts and the slightly less legendary Shayne Allen.
04:01 S2
Oh, I don't know Yeah, you know what? it just feels like we're back 20 odd years ago, doesn't it?
04:08 S3
It does. It does.
04:09 S2
Not feel about what was what was.
04:11 S3
The better trip, do you reckon Spain or... Sydney 2000. Either of you?
04:16 S5
I have to say 2000.
04:18 S2
Def, definitely for for what it represented and what it was, but... I actually preferred 2002, nil in France. I think the... trip to Germany before... well, you were at that one. Were you saying?
04:33 S3
No, no, I wasn't I was going to say that. Maybe that's why I preferred it.
04:37 S2
No, Jodi and I were still over there. That was. That was my last hurrah overseas for throwing, but, um. Yeah, that that was a great trip, that one, because we spent time in Germany training for a week or so beforehand and then over to France for the competition.
04:52 S3
All right. So we will start with you, Shane. So what got you into sport originally?
04:59 S2
It's a good question and it's a funny realisation. And if you know what I've gone on to do since then, you'll probably think I'm nuts for finally realising this, but only realised about five years ago that I'm actually a sporty person or a sports person. I thought a sports person was someone that knew all the footie stats and watched it every weekend. Like you said before, I haven't even watched the Paralympics yet. I haven't watched, I watched very little of the Olympics. I love doing sport and being active, but I grew up in the bush. There wasn't a lot to do. Always played hockey. I grew up in a swimming family. My family was very competitive swimming, I hated it.
And then in... when I went to high school, first couple of weeks of PE, they took us out to the out to the edge of the football field and gave us all discuses and said, Have a crack at this. And when I threw it, mine went twice as far as everyone else. So I thought, here we go. I did grow up with a lot of role models in my family for sports. As you know, as you guys know, I've had uncles that that have been very supportive, a sporty... Paralympians and endurance kayakers and, or, and all sorts of other things. So I don't know. I just grew up around it and yeah, it just became part of my... I guess, wellbeing, my... whole life.
06:18 S4
So where in Australia do you hail from? Just to clarify.
06:20 S2
Right now I'm on the Central Coast in New South Wales, but I grew up in, hence the nickname Jethro, which I got before was, way out in the middle of New South Wales, Coonabarabran, about 3000 people. And, yeah. So definitely. Yeah, definitely. Truth be told, I was born in Penrith Panthers. But, yeah, so, but we moved out there when I was about two and so. Yeah. So you out there, um....
S4
You mentioned that... you had other Paralympians in the family. Can you tell us who they were, what their sport was?
06:58 S2
My uncle Chad, Chad Townes, who's, you know, he's a bit of a legend of the of the game going back. I believe Jodi went to... Seoul in 88 with Ted. He was a javelin thrower. So, you know, throwing seems to be in the blood as well as doing crazy other things that we've gone on to do. There's another crazy, crazy guy out there named... Johnny Mandel. Johnny Dangerous, who's very... well known in the, sort of endurance sports. He's... a cousin of mine. Second cousin.
07:28 S4
I know of him.
07:28 S2
Yeah. So does Jodi. I think he does. So.
07:32 S4
Yes. Now?
07:33 S2
Yeah. So he does, he's the only, or he was the first. I don't know if he's the only anymore two person to have done Uberman... not Uberman, Ultraman, which is a three day. There is an Uberman. That's a crazy other different thing. Yeah, but it's crazy long three day triathlon event that he's done, Ultraman. And he's about to do it again this year or next year or something as well. So yeah. So you know that that that's you know, I think. Yeah. My... crappy eye condition is part of my DNA, but I think it brought along with it a few other things because majority of people in my family who are, you know, who carry this trait tend to be the ones that that go on and do other things as well.
08:13 S3
So what is your condition, by the way?
08:14 S2
Good old retinitis pigmentosa, which is, you know, the the most common cause of severe vision impairment in young adults. I'll still call myself a young adult, even though I turned 30 plus a half last week or two ago. Yeah. So, you know, it's it's nothing special. One of millions.
08:32 S3
Now, over to you, Jodi. Well, I'll ask the same question. What got you started in this whole thing?
08:37 S5
Oh, it's a bit of a story. I used to be a lounge lizard, pretty much. And one day I was sitting here watching the ABC and, Sports Arena program came on, and they had, like, this game on the telly called goalball, which is a team sport for the blind and vision impaired, which was devised after World War two to rehabilitate blinded soldiers. Before that, I got, my mum saw it as well, and I think I might have yelled at her from the kitchen or whatever, and we got in contact with them and I started playing that. So my first Paralympics was actually for goalball, and then I must have had to go somewhere for national championships. It was actually in Brisbane.
And I thought, you know what, I'm paying all this money to go to Brisbane. I was in Victoria at the time. I might as well do something else. And I did little athletics, so I had a bit of a throw as well while I was there. And it turns out that I'd done alright with this bit of a throw. And so then I got into the throwing. So 92 I did throwing and goalball, and then after that the Australian Paralympic Committee, as it was then, said one or the other. And I figured, well, since I've won medals in the, in the throws, I'm just going to stick with the throws. So I went on with the throws from there were 92, 96, 2000, 2004, 2008, you know, various injuries and stuff all through that. After 2008, I did a shoulder, had to have a shoulder. Rico got that done.
Tried to... come back for the throwing, but I got the boot from the Institute of Sport at the time, then thought, I wonder if there's any spots on the goalball team. So I got in contact with them and started training with the people in Victoria. Again with the goalball. Went away in 2011, was hoping to make the 2012 team, but then decided that I would tear two of my three hamstrings off the bone. So that pretty well put paid to that, and have that put back together. Sort of the $6 Million Man, I think it comes to Paralympic sport. Put that back together. And yeah, couldn't try to come back for training again. Couldn't do that. Then just sort of moped around the joint doing, you know, just going to the gym and stuff.
And then I think it might have been through Covid, got back into riding. I'm stupid. I ride a single bike, but I do live in a very quiet town. It got later onto that, and then... found a little club up here that they opened to make it a bit like parkrun. It's called the Pink Flamingos and it's a ladies cycling club. I wanted to get on to that, but they were doing that on a Sunday afternoon. No public transport in a little country town. I'm now up in Bargara near Bundaberg. No public transport. So I put a little note out on the local NDIS, Facebook page, said This is what I want to do. Don't care if you're a male, but if you're a male, you won't be able to ride with us because it's a female thing.
Everybody pointed me in the direction of a lady called Rene Bloss, and said that everyone was tagging her in the post, so met Rene. She was taking me to the Pink Flamingos on a Sunday. We were riding single bikes and she was like shadowing me, making sure I wasn't, you know, going to run into anyone or anything. And I said to her one day, Hey, do you reckon you'd be keen to have a crack at riding a tandem? And she's like, Yeah, I'll give it a go. So, hubby had a tandem, has, still has a tandem. So we bought that, went along and jumped on that, and things may have progressed. So now I'm doing silly things like riding bikes around the joint.
12:11 S3
This is where I feel outnumbered. I've got a tandem cyclist sitting across from me. I've got a reformed tandem cyclist talking to me here. And Shayne, you do tandem cycling as well, don't you?
12:22 S2
Yeah. So, um. Indeed. Once, once. I did finish throwing around 2004. I was on the team for... Athens and ended up doing some long distance running and a few half marathons and things. And, shortly after that, I moved up to the Central Coast, and... my uncle had given me when he when he passed away, he left me one of his... old tandems. And when I pulled it out of the, the moving van, my neighbor across the road said, Oh, that looks alright. I love he's a cyclist. Let's get out on that. So, yeah. After a few months he managed to really twist my arm and get me into it.
And I worked, uh, with one of the large telcos in Australia at the time, and there was another, blinky cyclist there who was doing quite well, who I'd grown up with through various camps and stuff with Vision Australia. And... I reached out to him. I knew he was... racing. I said, Look, I want to do this tandem up, get it going. And and he introduced me to a few people because he lived on the Central Coast as well, and from there built that bike up into something worth racing again and broke it very quickly because I started racing with some pretty, pretty serious cyclists up here. And one of my mates, who I ended up racing a lot with, he owned... still own a bike shop up here on the coast.
And through his contacts, we... bought a frame and and built that up to, out of spare parts that come back into his shop through. We built it up to a race spec, and we actually started racing pretty seriously to the point where in um, 2016 or sorry, the qualifiers for... Rio 2016. We came second in the individual time trial. I always feel funny saying an individual time trial when you're on a tandem, but still called the individual time trial out on the road. We came second and, they took first place and third place away to Rio for that. So you guys all know sports and politics. I'll let you figure out what happened in the background there.
So yeah. So I became quite competitive, and quite an elite level in cycling as well. I remember when I first posted my bike up on Facebook, new happy new bike day. Actually, Jodi commented on the seat and how sore it looked, and as if he'd ever get me out on one of them. So I do enjoy hearing and seeing all Jodi's stories about riding bikes now, and I often think about that day. But, um, yeah. So, you know, I became quite a, quite a... good level cyclist. So we kept going a little bit after that. But you know, we... get older and whatnot and after that, I, sort of, you know, I just wanted to to do something for myself rather than at a competitive level.
So I had a mate who was doing some Ironman distance triathlons at the time, and he'd... done a half Ironman and I said, Look, mate, I grew up swimming, competitive swimming family. I have run plenty of half marathons. And, you know, I've raced plenty of long distance on the bike. Do you feel like jumping on the front of the tandem and, you know, dragging me through one of them? So yeah, we did our first half Ironman in in 2018, and since then I've got a few more as well. Then Covid hit and shut down everything for me, but, yeah, now I'm just lifting, as I was saying, before lifting strong again because, yeah, I end up being back in the gym and I, you know, I work a long way from home now, and I've got young kids, so my focus is all on them.
But... coming up into the not too distant future, I will start to... get back out a bit more and, get back on the bike and, I think just nowadays I just want to focus on those nice long endurance events because strangely, they're fun.
16:10 S4
Hopefully we, I can... see you out there.
16:15 S1
This is Studio 1 on Vision Australia radio.
16:21 S3
The Paralympics are on as we speak and as we go to air, they're still in full swing. I'll start with you, Jodi. Just how do you feel when it's sort of this time of the four year cycle? Do you have any special thoughts for it, or do you sort of think, Thank goodness I'm not doing this anymore. Or is there is there a lingering, you know, It would be nice....
16:42 S5
Oh, let me ask you that question. It brings up all night. Really. It brings up all sorts of... feelings and emotions. I still feel cheated that I didn't get to 2012. I still think it was a political move not to select me. There was seven people for six spots on a goalball player. And I said then, and I still say now that I know I was a better goalball player than at least two of those girls. Anyway, that's that. As it is, I can't change that. And it does, it does hurt me that I didn't get to 2012, and I in fact, we went away in 2012 pretty much when the Paralympics were on. We went overseas, so I didn't see any of it, which was good for me. At 2016, I think I watched a couple of things Tokyo, I think I watched a few more things.
And as time has gone on, like, I don't know, too many, I'd actually don't know really anyone like, personally. They're not my best mates or anything. I know a couple of people in the track and field team and I, you know, have contact sort of with one of the ten cyclists. So I think this year I'll probably watch more of it than I have in the past. I think as time goes on, I'm, kind of like a bloody nutcase, but I think I'm dealing with it better now as time goes on. I am not deluded enough to think that I could possibly make a Paralympic team as a... tandem cyclist. Like I just, one, I don't have the money. Two I probably am too old. And yeah, I just, yeah...
I tell you what I do like though, just sort of a little bit of a sidetrack now that we have technology and you can watch on the streaming services like Nine now, because obviously Channel Nine and Paralympics, last night they were showing the swimming. If I see another passion in the pool, I'm assuming because they can swim forwards, backwards, upside down, inside out and they can spend 25 different distances in that pool. You see, I love the fact that I can turn on Nine now and I can watch anything else that's on. I may not get commentary with it. I'm fine with that. There was goalball on last night. We watched a little bit of that. There was track cycling on last night. We watched a little bit of that. And then, cause I'm so old, I've got to go to bed early because I, you know, I'm not as young as I used to be. I can't stay up all night and then back up the next day with my own training.
So, yeah, I'm just I'm loving that aspect of being able to say what you want when you want to see it, Shayne.
19:17 S3
I mean, you weren't around on the international scene for as long as we were, but I mean, do you still get any feelings when it's around about this time of the cycle?
19:27 S2
And it's... a big, big, big mix for me because I've got my two girls, 11 and seven. And, a few weeks ago I had the obligatory every four years, Bring your Paralympic Father to School Day. Yeah. So that's... been happening for a few years now. So it's still, there's a lot of bittersweet with me as well. So in 2000, so 99, national championships. One of my... biggest achievements is I won the Australian National Championships, beat the great Russell Short for the gold medal that year. And that's when I qualified for the... Paralympics in 2000. The following weekend, I broke my right ankle and actually never threw as good again, in comp. So, you know, I don't think I ever fulfilled my potential.
And as I said before, I had I was on the team for, for Athens and, I changed coaches. And the coach that I had at the time was training some Olympic throwers as well, and I wasn't getting the attention that I needed. But, and he sat me down one day and he drew a line, and he put names above it and names below it, and my name was one of the ones below it. And he said, Priority above the line, not below the line. And so I left the sport under not great circumstances, and I did... again, make a comeback myself. Jodi, I don't... know if you know about this. But, back in for 2012, I started throwing under the guidance of Ken Harradine, but, yeah. So I was throwing again there, but, at that time I got a big, big promotion at work and I bought a house and and, you know, life got in the way. So I had to stop then.
And then, of course, the story that I mentioned before with cycling, I should have gone to Rio for cycling short of the long, but, and, and so the... guys that that beat me at the trials that I came second behind, they bombed out, the guys that I beat at the trials, they got the bronze in... that event. So, you know, we put minutes into them in the trials. So, you know, it's, it is bittersweet. But then I see the joy that my kids get when they take... well, my youngest this year, I asked my daughter, my oldest daughter, if she wanted me to go and speak to their class. So embarrassing dad. No, like. But, you know, it is very bittersweet. So I see so much joy and pride that that they have in me being a Paralympian and associated with it that way. But yes, there is still definitely... sort of, yeah, unfinished... I do feel there's unfinished business, and my oldest daughter has become quite adept with the discus this year, and... she's really growing into herself. And I've started doing a bit of coaching with her. And, you know, you're going to become a soccer dad.
22:21S3
Are you, or discus dad?
22:22S2
Oh, that's my little one.
22:23S4
DG discus dad.
22:24S2
My... little one's a soccer. She's... nuts for soccer. My oldest one's pretty damn good at netball as well, but, yeah. So this year I've started coaching her a bit with... the discus. And, you know, I dusted off the old Dunphy or whatever it is that I got there and thought I'd take it down to the park and my knees don't like it anymore. I couldn't go to the gym for two weeks because. Because my right knee was so sore, which happens to be a running injury. But yeah, you know, because I'm lifting now, I'm actually deadlifting more than when I was when I was throwing. So I'm strong as anything, but yeah, it's... I don't have the time.
23:04S4
I've always made the joke that if I'm not successful in cycling because I have not competed internationally, I've done plenty of national competitions and hopefully going to compete in the World Cup next year. But I've always made the joke that if I am not a successful cyclist, I think I'll just become a bodybuilder.
23:20S3
Yeah, and if you've seen... Izzy there, she's compact.
23:24S4
I'm tiny. Yeah. I'm, I mean, I'm muscular, but I'm not that muscular, so I might just be I might be even more unsuccessful in bodybuilding.
23:31S3
So going back to I mean, when when you retire, it's always a funny feeling. It's that you feel like you've actually lost something. And I mean, I don't know about you two, but, I mean, I had rather mixed experiences with, over my career. And like the pair of you. There were things that there is unfinished business, but there is this combination of grief and loss, but also relief as well. I was quite happy that it was over in in some ways. I mean, do the pair of you understand where I'm coming from here?
24:04S5
I definitely understand the grief and the loss. Like I found myself mowing the lawn there on numerous occasions going, Daddy, is that if you feel like mowing a bloody lawn, there must be more. You know, I've travelled the bloody world. I've done this, I've done that, and I'm reduced to mowing the lawn. Yeah. So I definitely understand that. The grief and the loss. I think that's why I gravitated to something else. Something I can put my mind into and try and, like, I don't know about, I'd be interested to chat to you at another time about the World Cup next year and whatever, but I yeah, I yeah, I certainly know what you mean. I don't know about the relief though. Sorry. That was the other question I don't know. Relief in some sense that I when I train now I can, if I need to leave five minutes early to go and get something to the supermarket, I can. If I skip ads, nobody's going to be over my shoulder going, what are you doing? You know, what do you do?
25:02 Speaker ?
Skip it.
25:03S5
Dependable. So that side of it. Yeah, I still enjoy going to the gym. I still enjoy getting up at stupid o'clock for cycling now, but I don't miss that part of it. Yeah, I see where you're coming from, Shayne. I think relief....
25:18S2
At the time I did, I definitely feel the loss. I definitely feel because I gave up when I finished high school. I got into uni to do psychology and I put that aside to go and train for Spain and then... Sydney and then sort of... my life started on this... other trajectory. And I always look back and, and to some degree regret not doing psychology because it's, you know, there's still time. Maybe I will one day. And, you know, I dabbled in so many things after that and, and, and every time I get into something, my wife goes, Bloody hell, here we go. She knows that I'm going to take it to the nth degree. So I guess... there was relief at the time because it was causing me so much stress and anguish with the fallout I had with my coach. And then... I looked to fill that... void with with so many other things. I got lost for a long time.
You know, I, I was a massage therapist with the Waratahs for a while. I had my own massage clinic and various other things. I wore my hands out because I was always just doing sports stuff, and I just kept looking for things to to fill, I guess, a void. I went to the running. I went back to throwing in 2012. I got into the cycling, I went to the triathlons, and I think, you know, I was I was working with a telco for 12 years and then they made me redundant at the end. It was December 2019. I'd been there 12 years, you know, I was been there a long time and they gave me a good payout and I thought I'd have a couple of months off and... then do the renos, get a job. And then I ended up without work for ten months, which was... bloody tough.
And, I was fortunate enough to end up just purely by chance in the job that I'm in now, and it has filled a big void, and I draw a lot on the lessons that I learned through my sporting career. I work with a sales team and I manage manage about eight sales guys for what was when I joined was a I was the 20th person to join the company. It's now a massive big, fraud prevention company. And I manage manage a team of sales guys in there. And I think I draw on all that experience from, you know, goal setting and, and the thrill of the achievement and the chase and the and the work that you have to put in. So, yeah, you know, it was a relief at the time because of the struggles. But I definitely did mourn it. But I've... been able to harness that energy into other places and, and become successful elsewhere. So yeah, it's going back. It's bittersweet, I have to say.
27:57S3
So before we go, I'm going to establish a new question here that... Is there a sport that you do at the moment that should be in the Paralympics, or just because you do it? At the moment I'm thinking of... bringing painting in.
Speaker ?
Oh, can I answer this question? Guide dog walking.
28:16S2
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm good at that.
28:17S4
Me too.
28:18S3
Jodi?
28:19S5
I sometimes walk my hubby's guide dog.
28:21S3
So guide dog guides. A guide dog walking. Walking okay. Paralympics Australia, if you're listening. That's the new event... blind athletes only. Shayne and Jodi, thank you so much for agreeing to be on Studio 1. It has been a blast from the past.
28:40S5
Thanks, Sam. You're welcome. Anytime. I'm always up for chats.
28:42S2
Yeah, likewise. And it's great to be back in the same space with you guys again. It's. It's too long.
28:49S3
Before we go this evening, we've got some news over the weekend. This show was runner-up in three different categories at the South Australian Community Broadcasting Association Bilby Awards. We were runner up in Best Interview, You Can't Get Out of your Car podcast series and Best Show. But that's a wrap for this week. A big thank you to Jodi and Shayne.
29:11S4
And of course, a big thank you for listening.
29:13S3
Next week... well, we've been out and about. Now it's time to travel. We ask a few friends, What's the point of travelling if you can't see? And well, we may get a few experts in.
29:25S4
But between now and then, please do get in touch with the show. Whether you have any experience with the issues covered on this week's episode of Studio 1, or whether you think there's something we should be talking about. You never know, your story and insight may help someone who is dealing with something similar.
29:40S3
You can email us, studio1@visionaustralia.org - That's studio number one at Vision Australia dot org.
29:45S4
Or perhaps you can drop us a note on our Facebook page at facebook.com, Nova Radio Network. We want to hear from you.
29:53S3
Bye for now.
29:55S1
Vision Australia Radio gratefully acknowledges the support of the Community Broadcasting Foundation for Studio 1.
