Adrian Barich: as Brisbane prepares for the Olympics in 2032, which sport can get me into the green and gold?

Have you ever dreamt of competing for Australia at an Olympic Games? Have you ever wondered which sport would best suit your particular skill set?

I’m told many of our best young athletes are currently deciding on their sporting pathway and lots are choosing Olympic sports, after Brisbane was announced as the host of the 2032 Summer Games.

Sports including swimming, rowing, hockey, water polo and rugby sevens are being picked up, even ahead of the Australia’s traditionally big sports such as AFL.

Kids aged 12 and over are being lured into Olympic sports by the fact that the Games are coming to Australia during their sporting lifetime. And when you consider cricket, lacrosse and netball may be played in Brisbane, alongside squash and surfing, well, you get the picture.

Personally, I think the Games’ organisers should add AFL in 2032, as surely we’d be guaranteed of a gold medal.

That brings me to the main subject of my column: if you started training today, what sport do you think you could qualify for in Brisbane? I conducted a little poll and found that many people thought they could easily master sports such as air rifle or air pistol in a relatively short period of time.

Other “easier” sports mentioned were archery, badminton, table tennis and fencing. Golf would be one of my picks, alongside shot-put.

After extensive research I also discovered the “10,000 hour theory” which suggests that to become an expert in any given skill, a person just needs to practise deliberately for about 10,000 hours.

Doing the maths, with the Brisbane Games seven years away, I worked out that I’d probably need to become an “expert” within five years to qualify in time for the Olympics, so I would need to increase my training load to 40 hours a week for that period.

That’s six hours a day, seven days a week. I generally get home from work at Seven at about 7pm so if I eat dinner at work, I could practise until 10pm, then get up at 5am and practise again until 8am each day. And voila, I’m on my way to the Games.

Thinking it through a bit more, I remembered I am actually quite a good table tennis player (if I do say so myself), so I already may be considered more skilled than a novice. Maybe I’ll only need to do 5000 hours to take it to an Olympic level … which would be 20 hours a week for five years.

As kids, we played ping pong (as we called it) on an old door placed on two stools. That really sharpened our skills, being that the door was half the size of a proper table tennis table.

And to any of you reading this who are scoffing at my chance of representing Australia, or if you just think it’s a ludicrous ambition: just remember Raygun in Paris and also a mate of mine named Mick Colliss.

Growing up, Mick dreamed of playing for Australia and competed in everything from rugby union to lawn bowls. But his chance to don the green and gold only came when he invented the Australian Sudoku team.

He and three rugby mates picked themselves to compete for our country in India at the World Sudoku Championships (prior to that there had been no Australian team). I believe the first time Mick actually did his first proper Sudoku was on the plane, so it was little surprise to anyone that the team finished last in Goa.

But that aside, he will forever be able to claim he played for Australia. And let me tell you, he’s been milking it ever since.