It takes herculean dedication, sacrifice and financial burdens not just on the athlete but the immediate family who travel the dream pathways with their offspring, hopefully to the Olympics.

The dreams become even more implausible if the athlete lives in a small community hundreds of kilometres from elite competition required to advance their sporting skills.

Mount Isa can proudly lay claim to being the home of not one, but four, Olympians and one Paralympian:  Noel Hazard (boxing), Bill Burton (swimming), John Oravainen (swimming), Ellie Overton (swimming) and Michelle Bates (Paralympian swimmer).

They are the forgotten heroes, the quiet achievers, of Mount Isa sport. Their faces do not adorn billboards and there are no photographs of them in civic buildings nor sporting venues; how sad for this community, how sad for today’s young athletes not to be given the opportunity to learn of these great sportspeople.

When Noel Hazard was boxing above his weight and against opponents older than he was, he did not cry foul that it was too hot or too hard; he jumped into the ring of the 1956 Mount Isa Amateur Boxing and Wrestling Club and trounced the opposition to reserve a place in the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics.

Only two years earlier, in 1954, Dr Roger, a medical doctor at the hospital, sent out an invitation to all interested men to discuss the possibilities of formalising a boxing club in town albeit with no suitable gymnasium for bouts nor training but plenty of enthusiasm. Hazard was just one of many pugilists who joined the new association and as the saying goes, ‘… the rest is history’ as he proudly and nervously took his place in the Men’s Featherweight Division weighing in at 57 kilos. Noel Hazard will always be remembered as Mount Isa’s First Olympian.

The 1960 Summer Olympics were held in Rome, Italy, and young Bill Burton marched into the Olympic Stadium a little overwhelmed with all the pageantry but with a chest bursting with pride at not only being an Australian swimmer but importantly a Mount Isa lad. As a 10-year-old, Burton had been one of the early members of the newly formed Mount Isa Swimming Club in 1951 and swam behind Peter Wilson, John Marten, Oscar Allen and Mal MacRae in race points.

But in his second state championships in 1959, Burton cruised in for an easy win in the open 110 yards (100 metres) breaststroke which he won by eight feet to equal the race record of 1m 15.2s which he set in the heats.

Australian swim selector, Bill Holland, said after the swim, “This boy is in world class. I think he will beat world record holder, Terry Gathercole next month in the national titles.”

And he did.

Burton returned from Rome with an Olympic Silver Medal for the Men’s 4x100 metres Medley Relay. Two years later, he added to his medal haul with two Silver Medals at the 1962 Perth, British Empire-Commonwealth Games.

Not letting Burton, take all the glory from the Mount Isa pool, young Finnish immigrant, John Oravainen swam his way into Australian Olympic Team for the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics. After winning a Silver Medal at the 1962 British Empire-Commonwealth Games in Perth, Oravainen, had a taste for international medals and set his sight on selection for the Tokyo Olympics.

Day after day, hour after hour, Oravainen would swim lap after lap of the Mount Isa Memorial Swimming Pool in his bid to bring home an Olympic medal. Having young ‘Buttons’, his sister Rita, following him in his stroke-wake, gave the community its own version of the John and Ilsa Konrads story, although unhappily Rita missed out on full filling her own dream of wearing the Green and Gold Blazer.

Another Olympian swimmer to have lapped the local pool was Ellie Overton who as a youngster won many a race and club record at the Mount Isa Memorial Swimming Pool and of whom Mount Isa calls an Olympian daughter. Overton’s motivation to be an Olympic swimmer went into over-swim when she and her parents settled in Sydney in the late 1980s and she went on to represent Australia at three consecutive Games, 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta and 2000 Sydney.

Her philosophical attitude to the disappointment of not winning an Olympic medal has been inspirational to all athletes saying,” I don’t need a medal to be able to share my knowledge and experience of swimming with others, I just need the lessons I learned in the process of chasing one.”

For Michelle Bates, learning to swim in Mount Isa and compete against able-bodied swimmers was a bonus in disguise as there were no other ‘handicapped’ people to swim against. And at just 15 years of age, Bates represented not only Australia, but importantly Mount Isa, at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Paralympics.

“People forget the commitment and dedication that needs to go in to be a top athlete,” Bate has said.

“It’s a lot of training and you almost have to give up your life”.

A sediment that every elite athlete will acknowledge.

In the words of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympics, “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle; the essential thing is not having conquered but to have fought well.”

And fought well they did – Hazard, Burton, Oravainen, Overton and Bates – Mount Isa’s Forgotten Olympians.

Researched and written by Kim-Maree Burton.