What does it take to raise an Olympian? Were they oozing with talent from the get go, or were they a product or their parents ambitions? Host Amelia Phillips speaks with Tony Lacaze, father of athletics triple Olympian Genevieve Gregson, about the challenges, tough parenting decisions and best approach for balancing the physical and mental health of our sporty kids!
Below is an unedited transcript of the podcast episode:
I enrolled both Lockie and Charlotte into little athletics, little a’s last year. Now, Lockie was in the under eights and Charlotte was in the under sevens. While Charlotte literally skipped every race coming in dead last, but with a big smile on her face, Little Lockie did really well. He even made it into the zone champs, and I found myself daydreaming about jet setting around the world, watching him compete at World Championships.
I may have even worked out how old he’ll be for the Brisbane Olympics in 2032. Yep. He’ll be 19. Kind of perfect. The only slight issue is whenever I try to get him out to practice, he’s just not that keen. I even did my best rocky style pep talk and he basically told me to back off Mom . So I’m clearly not cut out for this parenting of an elite athlete thing.
This is healthy her. Phillips, what does it take to raise an Olympian? Were they oozing with talent from the moment they could walk? Or did mom and dad carefully shape and manage their childhood, setting them up for sporting success? Whilst we probably know the answer will be somewhere in the middle, it is an interesting question.
Did the parents of elite athletes raise their children any differently from, say, you or me? Could we be sitting on a little gem of. If only we just nurture them the right way and are willing to make the sacrifices and the tough decisions, could we too raise the next generation’s? Olympians, a man that has had firsthand experience with this is Tony Leks.
Proud dad to three time Olympian steeple chaser. Jen Le case. Now Jen Gregson. Tony, thank you so much for joining me today. My pleasure, Amelia. Now, Jen has competed in not one, not two, but three Olympic games most recently, Tokyo, where she made it into the 3000 meter athletic steeple chase final. But let’s rewind Tony.
Tell me about what sort of a child she was right from the get go. . Okay, that’s going back, but. I mean, we raised the kids on a farm on Bury Mountain. We had four of them under five, and that was a deliberate choice for you. Blake sort of had this image of my boys playing together happily, and you know, we didn’t care whether you had boys or girls, but they were all together.
So they did start off competing at a very early age. Like competing for affection. Competing for attention. Yeah, competing for the food on the table. That’s what it was like. Now, boys, girls, what’s the, what did you have? Boys, Girls. And where is Jen in that dynamic? She’s number three with two older brothers and a younger brother.
Okay. Three boys, one girl. Number three. Oh, yeah, that’s, that’s, that is a very competitive, fertile ground, isn’t it? Yeah. Well, she, she would put up with an from the boys, except getting into her room, she fought tooth and nail. Never let them in her. And then she did her best to beat them at everything that she could.
So she obviously had that competitive nature, which definitely comes from being in that larger family dynamic. What about just talent? Did she display talent from an early age, or did it kind of bubble up later on? Well, I mean, she. She was very physically strong for a little girl. Mm-hmm. Like I used to do chin up competitions with them and racing competitions and swimming competitions.
You bribe them and give them prizes, not, not with any goal of mind, just cause it was fun, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And she sort, she sort of competed pretty well, but she’s only competing against her brothers, not, not so well Peter. So, Yep. We didn’t do that with any plan of mine. It was just our lifestyle.
Mm-hmm. , we’d have fun play games and. And did you send her to Little A’s at a young age? Well, Donna usually made decisions like that and it was her decision to send them to Little A’s. So you can’t just drop your kids at little Age, you’ve gotta stay there. Yeah. And my memories of Little A’s was looking at my poor kids.
They’re all little kids that for their age coming last seriously last. In every event and getting bitten by mosquitoes a lot down at Helens va . Now, how old were they when you first sent them? Can you remember? Look, I can’t really remember, but I’m thinking grade 2, 3, 4, and five. Okay. So cuz you can literally send them as four year olds.
So you weren’t like, you know, pushing them outta nappies onto the field, like there were younger kids there. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean like when, when Donna had four kids to look after at that age to give her a break. I used to take the kids to the. Every morning, I’m pretty sure it was from least six months of age.
Mm-hmm. And I put ’em in a pig pen at the pool and then take ’em into the pool. So they were always, um, outdoors and active. And the funny thing about little a’s was like seriously, they came last and everything, but Donna drug up this trophy that they got at the end of one season and it was for the LA cars family.
Cross country, apparently they all showed some promise at cross country. Ah, interesting. And so let’s talk about you and your wife, Donna. And I have to say, I, I messaged Donna cuz I was thinking I was wanting to interview the mum of an Olympian, but then Donna actually palmed off to you and said, No, it’s Tony that.
Had the most impact. So it’s interesting you saying a moment ago, no, it was Donna that made those decisions. But talk to me about the two of you. Are you both sporty and competitive by nature? Like amateur sportsman? I mean, I did play professional rugby league and Donna was a ballerina. I dunno how fast she got with that.
But what we did a lot of, um, Tambre Mountain was small place. I was in the pharmacy there and it was very social. We had a lot of friends our age and we did triathlons. We played touch football. And we always took the kids with us. So the kids grew up on a sidelines at the touch football field or mm-hmm.
being held by their grandma at, uh, a triathlon. So they saw that sort of activity. So it’s not like we were necessarily super sporty or winning gold medals or anything, but we were always doing something like, you remember one time Don and I were just doing intervals on the oval, and, um, we turned around and here was Elliot and Genevie jogging behind us.
They just. Because they saw us doing it. Yeah, we gave an example, but we, we certainly don’t have some fabulous genes to pass on to, to get a, a great athlete. At the end of little a’s last season, this kid won, he would’ve been about 12 and he won, broke all these records and when he went up to get the trophy, his dad came with him and his dad was like six foot eight.
This massive muley guy and the whole audience. Laughed out loud because we were literally like, Okay, now we see the genes. Now we see where this, Yeah. This child has such a competitive advantage. What about your parenting style? Looking back now, do you notice anything that differed from your parenting style to other parents?
And I imagining, you know, this image of you out in the thunderstorms chasing your kids around the track while it’s raining, while everyone else has gone home. Well, no, it was nothing like that. I, I mean, I think we. Some natural advantages. Growing up on the farm, we were on 120 acres and there was, rain was surrounded by rainforest and a view to the coast.
So they got the perfectly healthy Yeah. Environment, you know, and that has some effect on their lungs developing. But I mean, I, being in pharmacy, I supplemented them early on. Yep. I juice stuff for them. They’ll juice carrots and Yep. Thing, we ate fruit every morning. The juices ended when, uh, again, his younger brother vomited beere juice all over the, the, uh, carpet
We dropped that part of the program after a while. , That’s the end of it. We’ll stick to, uh, pills. Thank you very much. Vitamin pills. Um, what about an attitude of excellence? Would you say you have this attitude of excellence, whether it be schoolwork, sporting, or are you more of a chill, relaxed family? No, I mean, we.
I wanted to give the kids everything. My parents couldn’t give me my, my parents gave me everything they could give me, and I was able to give more to my kids because of my financial situation. But yeah, we tried to expose the kids to everything and not just sport, it was travel, you know, food, wine. Just to give them as broader an experience as they could, you know, which was worth something to them.
Mm-hmm. , if you wanna talk about excellence, Donna absolutely drove the kids to do the piano. Mm. They couldn’t do anything else until they’d done their piano practice. Oh, I love that. So I think that was a discipline that they got and, and to this day, they hated it at the time. They also, they’re gonna make their kids do piano.
Yeah. I love that. And you hear that quite a. And even, you know, as a grown up now, some of the things my parents made me do, like making my bed every day and now it, you know, it just happens. And it’s, at the time I hated it. But it’s just, you know, it’s that repetition that becomes a habit and it’s effortless now.
Yeah. Well I think some of the things, like even we thought we’d take the French approach with wine and that we’d expose them to ’em and teach them what a fine wine taste like so that we’d demystify wine and they would never beri. I can’t say that worked all that well with, with the boys. But you know, we, we played tennis.
None of them played tennis. We used to read books endlessly. I think Oliver reads a little, Yeah. Something stick something something stick. Yeah. Well, running has obviously stuck. Tell me about when Jen stopped coming last and tell me about the progression from last to the Olympics. Well, when we came, we moved down from Tambre, we went to a a school.
We went there because they had a great, um, computer program. Nothing to do with. I can remember being at work. And then this, one of the mothers of a quite a sporty girl rang me at work to tell me that Genevieve had won the cross country. And I said, Oh, okay. And, but that was a big deal. Like there was some very good athletes there that she’d beat.
I think it was grade five. And so, Well that’s good. And then Donna took her to, um, districts mm-hmm. . And she, she came fifth, snuck in and just got in the fifth, which makes you go onto, Then she went to regional and some girl fell down in a, in a puddle before the thing. And Gene snuck in again at fifth. So went to, to, um, states and then we expected her to be absolutely demolished by the good athletes up there.
And she came, I think eighth. Wow. Which just shocked everybody, you know, we were expecting somewhere in the twenties. Yep. And we said, Oh, maybe we better give this girl some support. Mm-hmm. . And so, um, you know, then we, we did. Focus a little more on her running. Yeah. Okay. And that was around grade five? Yeah.
Okay. And then, and so did you then, you know, stick at little a’s or rejoin her, or you then got her a coach or joined an athletics team? Well, we were, um, We’re at Daisy Hill now by John Port College, so we’d left Little A’s, and they had a run club, which again was Donna’s idea. She made them all go to run club.
Mm-hmm. , I can’t remember if that was before or after she won the cross country. I’m pretty sure it was after Then the following year we, uh, I was running with her around the, around the block I think was the training that she got. Mm-hmm. And um, I love that. Yeah. I’m not sure I’m starting to lose track of it, but she went to Nationals and she was just training with the run club and she got second, which was.
Amazing. Yep. I think the following year we got her a coach, which was grade six. He coached her and LaDonna once again, got all of us to go down and train with Genevie. So she always had company and you know, somebody else to share the pain. Yep. And then that, that year she won national, so. Wow. You know, then we knew that, you know, she had some talent.
Tell me, as a parent, were there tough decisions that you needed to make? And I wanna give a brief example here. During the Tokyo Olympics, I was listening to an interview with one of the gymnasts. Um, And they had to have three knee reconstructions by the age of 21. And I was thinking, imagine having a 15 year old and being told that they need a knee reconstruction and then, you know, having to make that decision, do I allow them to keep, you know, competing and potentially break their body down?
Uh, tell me about any tough decisions that you had to make. Um, well, there weren’t many, uh, in terms of, um, with the kids. The kids were all, no problem growing up, you know, they did everything they. Genevie and three of her teammates from school got selected in the Australian CrossCountry and that competed in Italy and just leading into that and leading into nationals where she came fourth or fifth.
How old would she have been here? This was grade, Oh, I can’t think of it’s eight, nine, or 10. It was around that area. Okay. All right. Okay. And she was complaining of a pain in the back and we treated it in all sorts of ways and were just getting worse and worse. And then after nationals, we finally got a, a proper study done, and she had fractured.
One of the nex onus vertebrae. Oh, you know, one of the little spurs. So she’d been in a lot of pain for a long time. You know, we looked after that with just rest and pool running, and just kept her from impact until she started running professionally. That was the only, um, Bad injury that you had. What about mental health?
You know, we hear in the meter all the time. We’ve got Ash Bardi that took a big break from tennis because of the mental load. Did you observe any mental health challenges competing at such a high level at a young age? No. I’d have to say the exact opposite. I mean, generally didn’t just run, She played touch football, she did triathlons, soccer, hockey, gymnastics.
Often. She would play touch football in the morning on the Gold Coast, and then I’d take her to Brisbane to. Cross country, you know, at under, So I can remember she was playing in the final, the interstate touch football, and there was a dropoff, which is a very tense moment. It’s like the shootout and the soccer.
Mm-hmm. And all the friends were vomiting and Jeremy said, I love shootouts. It’s just fun. You know? I love, So not shootouts, a drop off, they call it. She was just never phased by nerves. Why do you think that is? What do she sounds like she’s mentally very resilient. Why do you think that is? I, I think it’s just.
We’ve always kept it fun. Like she never got burned out. She loved what she was doing. She loved pleasing her coach. She loves winning. Thankfully she was lucky to win early on, so she was able to put more energy into it and get more results. But she just competed in, you know, swim carnivals, everything. And the thing was, there’s no castigation for failure.
There was no, um, yeah, you know, we always encouraged her and said, Well done, no matter what she got, cuz we know she did her best. So I don’t think she ever developed an anxiety. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her anxious since then on the world stage. But yeah, she was never anxious as a junior. Mm-hmm.
So, no, I don’t think burnout was an issue. And we always kept it fun. Like we’d invite her friends around, you know, even her competitors to end of season barbecue, so that they would all stay friends and it’d be friendly on the, on the track. And they’d, you know, like they’d support each other when the other one won.
So we just kept it light and happy and, and relaxed, I think was the, Growing up, I think you raise a really good point here about walking that fine line between encouraging them and, and kind of channeling their talent versus pushing them too hard. And I, I was listening to an interview with the parents of Olympic Rower.
And they said that they had a deal with their son where they would do everything to support him, but he had to get out of bed on his own. And you know, Roers wake up at ridiculous times. It’s usually got a four in front of it, . And they said we would get up, make their sandwiches, drive them, you know, do all that.
But they had to be the one to get out of the bed when the alum went off. And I thought, what a great line to draw. . Tell me, Tony, I wanna ask you for us. You know, parents of children with the glimmer of hope, what advice would you give us if, you know, if our child is showing either talent or passion for a particular sport?
How do you suggest we walk that line between encouraging them without pushing them so hard? Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe we were just lucky. I mean, Gene would get herself out of, you know, she’d pack a bag the night before for training. So like she was, She was organized. Self-motivated. Yeah, self-motivated. . We didn’t focus on any one thing.
We didn’t make that the goal. So if you didn’t succeed at that one sport or event, your life wasn’t over. So she went to nationals for triathlon, cross country, all of them. So she always had something else to fall back on. If you’re talking about pushing, I just don’t feel I ever had to push. Mm-hmm. , you’ve gotta put everything in their favor, but let.
Like the ROAS parents said, You’ve gotta put in your bit. Love that. And they generally do. Yeah. It’s almost like being their coach, you know? Like they’re the ones that’s gotta turn up, but you know, you are gonna provide that extra support, I guess. Yeah. What about when you’ve got the kid that shows talent, but the motivation’s not there?
A bit like my story at the start, me trying to get lucky out in training, but he’s just not that into it. Do you think it’s. Like pursuing that? Or how do you, how do you balance that out? Well, you can do it for a short while. Genevie didn’t want to go to America. She didn’t wanna go to college. She tried to miss the test.
You know, like she did everything to avoid going, We just insisted, you know, through tears and everything else. We made her go. So, but that was towards the end of a career. I’ve known plenty of kids. There were so many talented kids that Genevieve came across growing up. They just never went on. But I, I think you’ve just gotta, you can’t make them, but you can make everything easier for them.
Mm. Make it absolutely easy so that they’ll eventually pick up the desire. When they see that get rewarded by success, they get reinforced by success. Why do you think those kids, if you can think of a handful of kids with immense talent you saw, but they didn’t go forward, why? What were some of the reasons why a big one was crazy?
Parents? What do you mean by crazy parents? Oh, I’m starting to get worried. No, there are some crazy parents. I see. I saw a lot of’em. I saw some amazingly talented kids and the parents. We’re too hard on them, too pushy, you know? Um, yeah. Okay. Too demanding. Look, honestly, um, Genevieve lost. That was okay, You’re on a foster defeated, but you just also say, you know, you did the best.
The girl was too good for you. There’s not much you can do about it. You know, Let’s get her next time. And, and she got ’em next time. But I’ve seen people tearing into their kids and. Giving ’em a hard time. Oh, that’s terrible. But also I was, I mean, once again, very lucky. It was, it coincided with a relatively affluent time of my life and we flew Genevieve everywhere, like, and we often flew her friends, like flew Annette down there to keep a company and so we, we were able to made it fun and and easy for her.
Yeah. But also we had the funds to do it and not all parents have that. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. There’s some talented kids who just don’t get the chance. Their parents can’t afford it. Yeah, absolutely. And that is just so sad and I hope that, you know, the government does what it can with grants, et cetera to support those children, cuz that is, that is a real loss.
Yeah, I think talent identification is important, but there’s so many other factors. I know Triathlon Queensland was screening athletes and they did a big rundown on what the parents’ abilities were and what the parents did. So I think they were sort of psychometrically testing the, the genes or the.
Group for the kid. Mm. And I think that is as just as important too. The support or the child gets. Absolutely. And I think you’ve kind of answered this next question, but I wanna ask it anyway. Do you think it’s better to expose your child to many sports in primary school or just to kind of hone in and focus on one or two?
No, absolutely. Keep it as broad as you can to not try to pick a winner. We didn’t choose steeple chase for genev. She didn’t do that until she went to. Why? Why do you think that it’s important to broaden that range? Well, just to find out what they’re good at and have fun like the kids love team sports.
Running is somewhat solitary. Let’s say. She had the fun of playing all those team sports, and I think the variety is good for developing kids muscles and bones. When you do too much of the same thing, you can overwork certain muscle groups. I mean, it is dangerous playing, say hockey, getting whacked in the head with a stick or playing touch football and yeah, hurting yourself, diving over the line.
But you’ve gotta let ’em be kids. And I think Jenna b playing touch football has been good for her steeple chase. I, I dunno if you saw a race not so long ago. Mm. Where somebody fell down in front of us. Pretty much hurdled her and skipped away from her and kept going, Oh, isn’t that awesome? Is there anything you would’ve done differently?
Looking back? I’d say no. Um, I think we were really lucky. We were lucky that the kids grew up on Bury Mountain. We were lucky we picked a co-ed school where they could support her. We were lucky that she had a, um, coach who didn’t want to fluger, who had a, a long term view of what she should do. We had friends that helped her go to training.
You know, looked after she had a friend call Annette, her daughter, ran with Genevieve, and she often took Genevieve to races or games or whatever. Yeah. Because we had four kids. We were getting to the same amount of sports, so you can have a good network. All we did was keep her healthy, take it to absolutely every event she wanted to compete in.
And, um, keep it fun. Oh, I love that. That was our model and that worked for us. We could have been lucky. Keep ’em healthy and uh, make sure they have fun . Yeah. I love that. Well, any last parting advice for us, uh, motivated parents that want like you to experience an athlete and support their child in their athletic passions?
That’s a big topic. Every kid is different. I’ve heard coaches talk about young kids who are early matures. This is their time. You’ve gotta let ’em do it. You say you can push them. They will probably not have the the body type to go on long term, so push them. Then other ones like Jennifer, who was small, we didn’t push her too hard.
Well, her coach was very mindful that he had a long term view of her sporting career, so he never pushed her. So she could have won a lot more junior titles if we’d let him or if he decided to push it. He never did. So you can’t push your desires on your kids? Yeah, I mean, I would. Genevieve never had this vision or dream to go to the Olympics.
She just loved running. She loved sport. She loved to please her coach. When she was at college in America, I was still reminding her, telling her that she could possibly go to the Olympics. That wasn’t the, you know, the, the end point of all her thing. It was just fun. And to this day, she loves running, never wants to stop running.
That is amazing. And look, I think the real takeout, what I’m hearing, chatting with you today, which is just. Inspiring is how you kept it fun and how it really was, you know, driven by her, her passion and her enjoyment for the sport rather than pressure. And I think that’s a really great point for us parents to take away.
You should be so proud. You and Donna, and Jen, we all are in Australia and thank you so much for all your insights today. My pleasure.
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