News

Inspired Performance

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 5  14 July - 10 August 2008 ]

By Shane Cahill

With 50 metres to go, Ralph Doubell knew an Olympic 800 metres Gold Medal was his for the taking – the psychological tie between him and his closest rival had snapped.

The 23-year-old University of Melbourne Zoology and Psychology graduate yelled inwardly, “You’re going to win! You can do it. You can do it. Just get to the tape!” As he surged to the take the lead he told himself, “You’ve won it! You’ve won it!”

But at the tape, it was all over, just another race. He had to ask US athlete Tom Farrell who came third what the world record was. Tom said, “You just equalled it”.

Doubell remembers: “From the moment I touched the tape it was all taken over by the presentation ceremony and press conference”. No dramatic lap of honour or waving the flag. It was a personal challenge which he had planned and had been successfully achieved with the enormous help of his coach Franz Stampfl.

On October 13, 14 and 15 1968, Doubell had followed to the letter Stampfl’s instructions – “just win the next three races.” Which were the heat, semi final and final against the world’s best in the oxygen-sapped atmosphere of Mexico City.

Crippling calf injuries meant Doubell could not defend his title four years later. All seemed set for the cultivated nonchalance of the brief but brilliant career of Ralph Doubell.

He happily encouraged reporters to believe that he trained on a diet of champagne alone, while the antelope skin suede jackets, bell bottom trousers, pop star hairstyle and sports cars all pointed to celebrity as much as athlete.

Forty years on Ralph Doubell AM is an Australian Olympic Legend. His 1968 time of 1.44.3 remained the world record until 1973 and has never been beaten since by an Australian, standing as the Australian record to this day.

He is the last Australian male to win an Olympic track gold medal, an honour he shares with Edwin Flack in the first modern Olympics at Athens in 1896 and Herb Elliott in Rome in 1960.

Doubell’s triumph was always going to have elements of the flamboyant and mysterious. The reason? Franz Stampfl, the University athletics coach who mixed unprecedented scientific rigour in his training methods – which had taken Roger Bannister to the first sub-four minute mile – with a Carlton bon vivant lifestyle.

After showing limited promise in high school athletics, Doubell thought success on the track might give him the chance to travel the world. He approached Stampfl after competing in the University Championships in Adelaide in 1963. The monocle-wearing and dictatorial Stampfl won Doubell over with a mix of relentless training, flattery and cajolery to convince him he could win gold.

And as Ralph quickly found out, Stampfl’s elite group of athletic charges could not endure the training without tackling the no less demanding food, wine and philosophy that followed on Fridays.

After a week of relentless interval training ranging from 50 to 1200 metres interspersed with jogging, Stampfl would lead the team to the second phase of the session.

Champagne and theory flowed in equal measure over lunch at Gina’s and later at Watson’s wine bar in Lygon Street. “By four o’clock it all began to make sense,” Doubell told Melbourne’s latest sports Blues at their award ceremony in April this year.

According to Stampfl, the former Austrian ski instructor turned coach, winning the 800 metres gold was a simple matter.

“Franz said all you have to do is run the first lap as fast as you can and the second one even harder,” Doubell told the new Blues.

But Stampfl knew that just as there were no short cuts to peak physical condition, only supreme mental toughness could take this relative unknown and late starter (Doubell ran his first half-mile as 17-year-old at Melbourne High) to kick past his Kenyan rival Kiprigut to win Gold in 1968.

“Most athletes in an Olympic Final have pretty much equal physical capacity but it is Doubell’s mental attitude that enables him to produce an inspired performance,” Stampfl later recalled.

Stampfl impressed upon Doubell that world standard was the only level that mattered.

“There’s never been a coach like him,” Doubell says. “I had faith in him, I knew he could do it. I was the wild card. Could I do it? Could I stand up to the pressure?”

This mental toughness was called on immediately competition began in Mexico City. In the Heat, Doubell was cut off at the start but that did not prevent him from catching the field and winning by several strides.

In the Semi-Final Doubell had already begun the mind games with Kiprigut. After holding back, Doubell kicked and drew level with the then favourite giving the sense he had plenty in reserve still.

And then in the Final Doubell was wrongly identified as making a false start in his heat. He was automatically placed on his final warning.

Rather than dispute the decision and almost certainly lose concentration, Doubell chose to ignore the injustice and focus on the moment.

Doubell held nothing back, telling himself he could win it.

“You’ve got to run to your strength and to an extent you have to control the race. The other competitors have got to know they have to beat me to win. You have to exert psychological pressure. You can’t be the recipient of it.”

After forced retirement Doubell completed postgraduate qualifications at Harvard Business School before embarking on a career in banking that has taken him to New York, London, San Francisco and for the past 20 years, Sydney.

Ralph Doubell will return to Melbourne to live later this year.

He has maintained close contact with members of the University Athletics club such as his 1960s training partner Stanley Spittle and other Olympians including Tom Farrell who will be visiting Doubell in a couple of months in Sydney.