Let's start with a story from the distant past. The twenty twenty two Australian Open Melbourne was on the tail end of a series of COVID lockdowns and the only thing that would lift the city spirits was a week of getting sun burnt, booing loudly and drinking prosecco.
But that tournament had an even better.
Treat in store for us, one we hadn't seen in more than forty years. Hey, I'm Tony Armstrong and you're listening to the ballroom where we celebrate the winners, the losers and the weird stuff between. Today it's the overachieving legends who couldn't choose which sport to be a championaip from a plucky four year old picking up a racket in Ips, Which Queensland. Ash Barty took something of an
unorthodox path to tennis glory. While she's one of this country's most revered and beloved players now, she also made an impressive mark on the gentlewoman's game cricket. When she debuted in the first season of the Women's Big Bash League, Ash was already.
A junior Wimbledon champ. In her first cricket.
Match, she scored sixty three not out from sixty deliveries, earning herself a spot on the Brisbane heat side. But it wasn't long before the courts beckoned. Ash left cricket after only one season. Then she simply became number one in the world on the tennis circuit.
She spent one.
Hundred and fourteen consecutive weeks there, the fourth longest run in WTA history, and of course became the first local to win the Australian Open in four decades. But Ash's far from the only athlete to kick a different ball or use a different bat these days. A combination of accessibility and general athletic prowess means more and more pros are switching it up. Australia has a great tradition of
multi sport champs. At the turn of last century, a true all rounder was a bloke who played cricket in the summer and footy in the winter. There's a huge list of these legends. As far back as eighteen eighty two, George Coulthard was playing for the Carlton Footy Club and playing Australian Test cricket. Later, Alfred Buller Ryan played Sheffield Shield for South Australia under Bradman's captaincy and was twice
best in fires for the South Adelaide Football Club. Keith Miller played cricket until he was drafted as a World War II fighter pilot.
He was a member of the Invincibles, the Aussie cricket.
Side who went undefeated on a tour of England, and he played fifty games in the VFL for Saint Kilda. Miller was even in the original Cricket Hall of Fame. So you know there's acento. But who are the most noteworthy multi sport athletes. Well, they're all legends in my eyes, but these are some of my picks. This first example didn't just play two different sports. He did something even more impressive. Is that the word I'm looking for? Impressive?
Oh right, it's actually traitorous. Brad Thorne is the only player ever to suit up for both the Kangaroos in rugby league and the All Blacks in rugby union. He was born in New Zealand but played rugby league in Australia as a young man. He went on to play twenty one seasons, winning four titles with the Brisbane Broncos and twice emerging victorious in the state of Origin for Queensland,
among other titles. In two thousand and one, he began a switcher roo career that took him to New Zealand to play rugby union for the All Blacks, then back to league here, then back to union again. He won fifty nine international caps for the All Blacks and was on the twenty eleven World Cup winning side, four hundred and sixty games of rugby and seventeen major trophies in total. Like Ash Barty, Dylan Orcott is another tennis champ who's
made it to the top in a second sport. He was a member of the Australian men's national wheelchair basketball team, the Rollers. At the age of seventeen, he became their youngest gold medal winner at the two thousand and eight Beijing Paralympics, and was at the time the youngest athlete in the competition's history. He then went on to become the only man to smash a Golden Slam in tennis.
That's when you win every tennis major and the Olympic Gold in a single year at a totally different sport from the Olympic gold he'd already won leave some glory for the rest of US. Mate Elise Perry at the top of her game in two sports, simultaneously playing both soccer and cricket at the same time on different days.
With the Southern Stars.
She won the twenty ten World twenty twenty, then went to the FIFA World Cup with the Matildas in twenty eleven, before she had even made the move to cricket full time in twenty sixteen. She also won the twenty thirteen World Cup and several ashes tests. Women's sport does have a few players like Perry. Historically, most haven't been paid enough to focus on one competition full time. That means
their offseason became more of a second job situation. See also the Legendaria and Phillips, who played nine seasons of WNBA for five different teams, won a gold medal at the two thousand and six Feeber World Championship and was a co vice captain at the twenty sixteen Olympics. That all happened before she became a three time Premiership player and twice League Best in Feris, playing AFLW for the Crows before following in her dad's footsteps and moving to Port Adelaide.
Phew.
Now, some would argue that hitting or throwing all handballing or marking or kicking one kind of ball and then a different kind of ball isn't so hard. I mean, I can vouch for the fact that it's kind of hard to just do one sport in the first place, But for two Australian women.
The shift was a totally different ballgame. I was really trying to avoid those puns here on the track.
Yanna Pittman is almost unrivaled in terms of versatility. She's one of only ten athletes to win world championships at the youth, junior and senior levels, and the first Australian woman to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. She's a two time world champion in four hundred meter hurdles and won Commonwealth gold in that event in both two thousand and two and two thousand and six, as well as being part of the winning four by four
hundred meter relay team twice. Then in twenty fourteen, she switched it up entirely and competed in the two person bobsleigh event at Sochi, which I guess is sort of like hurdling in that you have to clear the mental hurdle of competing in an entirely different climate and shooting down a terrifying track at speeds of up to one hundred and.
Thirty kilometers per hour.
Finally, Nova Paris's incredible Switcher Room. A year after she won Olympic gold with the hockey ruse in nineteen ninety six, she decided to be a champion track and field athlete instead.
In nineteen ninety.
Eight, she became a Commonwealth gold medalist in the two hundred meters sprint and four why one hundred meter relay in Kuala Lumpur and competed at the two thousand Sydney Olympics. Then she became an Australian senator, which might be the most challenging sport of all.
Thanks so much for listening to the pool Room.
I'm Tony Armstrong and this has been an iHeart production.
I'll speak to you soon.