Brooke’s back! Brooke Hanson, that is. At 41, the Aussie pool ace who followed gold and silver at Athens 2004 with a record six golds at World short-course Championships that same year, contemplated the number 100 at the Currumbin Vikings centenary last month and realised she’s just a spring chicken after all.
No four walls and a black line this time. Surf’s up!
Comeback coverage for Brooke Hanson in the Gold Coast Bulletin – Photo Courtesy: Gold Coast Bulletin
It was 2002 when Hanson last competed in surf lifesaving. A vault of honour in the Dolphin pantheon, a husband and four kids later and Hanson felt ready to plunge back in.
Number crunches aside, it was the Currumbin Vikings bash that lured Hanson back to the waves – and after a “why not me” thought flashed through her mind at a members meeting, the decision was taken: at the weekend she suited up for the masters category at the Point Danger Branch Surf Lifesaving Championships at Greenmount.
The 41-year-old said surf resurgence first entered her orbit at a club members night.
The sight of Hanson, the daughter of Swimming World’s Oceania Correspondent Ian Hanson (but we won’t hold that against her), on a beach and back in the surf proceed to be a media magnet.
She’s not any old surfer. Sydney-born into one of Australia’s premier surf lifesaving families, Hanson said her first sporting memory was sitting on her dad Ian’s shoulders on the beach shortly after he competed.
“I was probably five years old and he had just competed for Freshwater but I remember thinking how pumped I was.
“Surf to me, my whole career, was something I could enjoy socially with friends. With swimming, it was just you and the black line so I love the freedom of it all and how you can be racing well but then a wave picks up all of your competitors.”
In the wash of coverage, Hanson told Liza Reilly at the Gold Coast Bulletin how the Currumbin party motivated her to get back to what she’d love for so long. Said Brooke:
“Everyone was talking about how much involvement they’d like to have in the 100-year celebrations and I said the best way to be involved is to pull on the green and white quartered cap again. I’m so proud to be a member of this surf club and with the club turning 100 years old, I thought I’m not going to be around in another 100 years.”
Comeback coverage for Brooke Hanson in the Gold Coast Bulletin – Photo Courtesy: Gold Coast Bulletin
Carpe Diem! And not just for her and husband Jared Clarke: the kids are all surfers too, the latest wave of a family tradition. Said Brooke:
“Jared and I are raising fourth-generation surf lifesavers and we thought it would be awesome for them to watch us race.”
Hanson didn’t need to get fit first: she still trains every day, ocean swimming and running in the main. Watching her kids compete at the Point Danger branch championships a couple of weekends ago, got the nerves pumping:
“I said to my husband, ‘this is going to be us next weekend’. Seeing my oldest (Cooper) at branch championships standing on the line wearing the green and white cap made me so proud to be a part of Currumbin’s history.
This past weekend, Hanson decided to join a 15-year-old’s race as a guest just for the fun and experience of getting back in.
It’ll long be a day to remember for a 14-year-old who raced up and age-group and will forever more be able boast of beating an Olympic gold medallist. Allana Glowaski lined up for the surf race final but wasn’t quite sure who the lady was getting ready alongside her.
YOU’RE KIDDING: Brooke Hanson shows “the kids” a clean pair of heels in the combined Masters/Under 15s surf race at the Point Danger SLSA Branch Championships. Photo Courtesy:Salty Glow Photography.
The teen told Reilly at the Bulletin:
“I got down to the line quite late and there were all these older people lined up and then my mum (Therese) came up to me and said: ‘You’re racing against Brooke Hanson, a former Olympian.’ And I was like: ‘Wait, is she in under-15?,’ I didn’t really change my approach … I thought it would be a fun chance to see how I’d go against her. I turned the can (half-way buoy) and looked back and couldn’t see many people around me and then I got to the beach and started running up and saw her (Hanson) still swimming and I thought: ‘Wow, I’ve just beaten an ex-Olympian’.”
Glowaski did what so many on the way to big things have done before her: she got home and looked Hanson up. Eyes wide open. Brooke had led “the kids” out and around the turning buoys, with the youthful chase back claiming the “comeback kid” in the race to the shore – Hanson finishing a close up fourth and victory in the Masters, saying “that was so much fun” – bring on the State and “Aussies” at Broadbeach in April.
The Queen Of Indy 2004
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Brooke Hanson – all smiles in super-season 2004
She will have learned that when Hanson returned home from the Olympic Games in Athens sporting two medals, a gold and a silver, and a million-dollar smile of the kind that marketeers and merchandisers pray for, she had found herself posing for snapshots at the airport with a Prime Minister working the campaign trail for all it was worth.
After six golds at World s/c titles in Indianapolis later that year, she might have expected John Howard’s entire newly elected Government to turn. After all, only the hosts USA, Australia and Sweden (with 9 medals, topped by 2 golds) had beaten Brooke on the medals table. Alone, discounting her contributions to relays, she would have finished third among nations, Great Britain and Russia, third and fourth on the table with two golds apiece.
She topped all three breaststroke finals, over 50, 100 (a championship record) and 200m, won the 100 and 200m medley and claimed gold with Sophie Edington, Jess Schipper and Libby Lenton, that 4x100m medley cracking the world record with a 3:54.95 blast.
On the penultimate day of action, she took the 100m breaststroke crown in a championship record, added the 200m medley crown and, with dad Hanso, then the Swimming Australia media director, any her side, told me:
“Life changed dramatically for me after the Games. It was full on. But I wanted so much to come here and experience this great hall, the crowd, the buzz of the championships.”
She had not expected to be the biggest buzz:
“Five gold medals is a dream come true (there was one to come). There have been so many special moments that I really don’t want to say goodbye to 2004.”
She didn’t say goodbye to it until she was told she’d be in the 2005 edition of Who’s Who in Australia, along with other new entrants, such as Princess Mary of Denmark, model Sarah O’Hare and AFL coach Leigh Matthews.
No stopping this ageless Olympian…who still looks as fit as ever. A Who’s Who and other similar compilations of achievers to set aside a blank space for the few more lines they may well be writing alongside the name Brooke Hanson..still making waves (and catching them)….as the fun continues on the Gold Coast….what a life!
Allana Glowaski ?