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Conflicting national allegiances in sport are no simple thing. It is hardly unreasonable for someone with more than one national background to feel competing tugs when it comes to flying the flag on the international stage. Emotion and pragmatism collide to force hard decisions.
Australia is a deeply multicultural nation – more than one in four Australians were born overseas, while millions more have parents born elsewhere. We are a nation of complex sporting allegiances. I have dual nationalities; if it wasn’t for the fact that I have all the sporting talent of a gnat, I might have to consider which country to represent.
For several years surfer Connor O’Leary, born in Australia to a Japanese mother, literally flew both flags after securing permission from surfing’s governing body to display dual colours on his rash-vest. “I’m fortunate to be able to live two cultures,” he said earlier this year – although O’Leary was eventually required to go all in on Japan ahead of the Olympics.
Sometimes the decisions are more practical. After being cut by the Australian track cycling program, sprinter Shane Perkins defected to Russia in 2017. Perkins has no family connection, but the Russian track program offered him a spot and he jumped at the opportunity. “It is my dream to go to another Olympics,” he said at the time. “I am only 30 and still have plenty of years left in me, so I thought ‘why not?’” (He ultimately retired before the Tokyo Games.)
And so it is not Matthew Richardson’s decision to switch from the Australian track cycling program to Great Britain in itself that has left many in the domestic cycling community seething. It is the way he went about it, a grand betrayal of a cycling establishment that had invested years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in his career.
Richardson was born in Kent, England and lived there throughout his early childhood, before relocating to Australia with his family aged nine. After initially pursuing gymnastics, Richardson switched to track cycling in his teens and was soon a promising sprinter. He won twin gold medals at the last Commonwealth Games and a handful of medals at successive world championships (including the team sprint rainbow jersey in 2022). Two silver medals and one bronze at the Paris Olympics underlined Richardson’s status as the second-best sprinter in the world, behind only Dutch sprint king Harrie Lavreysen.
This sparkling sprint success in Paris, alongside a remarkable men’s team pursuit gold medal, had Australian track cycling on a high – the nation’s best performance in the Olympic velodrome since Athens 2004. Until barely two weeks later, in mid-August, when Richardson announced he was leaving the Australian program for its arch-rivals, Great Britain.
This week, AusCycling released a terse statement having undertaken a comprehensive review of Richardson’s defection. Its findings are astonishing. AusCycling alleges that Richardson had lodged the paperwork necessary for a nationality change with the world governing body, Union Cycliste Internationale, before the Olympics – but he and British Cycling requested that the UCI delay official disclosure of the switch until after the Games.
Richardson then kept mum about his blockbuster move before and during the Olympic campaign, not telling his coaches or teammates. And after Paris, but before announcing the switch, Richardson asked to take his gear – including a custom bike, cockpit and race suit – to England. “This represented an unacceptable risk to AusCycling’s intellectual property,” the statement said.
Following the review, AusCycling has banned Richardson from re-joining the Australian national team, prohibited him from using any AusCycling or partner resources, and made him ineligible for any AusCycling awards (he would have been a strong contender to defend his male track cyclist of the year crown in December). Richardson had a two-year non-competition clause in his contract with AusCycling, but the governing body determined that enforcing the ban would likely be “legally unenforceable”.
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Richardson has already returned to the track – he beat reigning world and Olympic champion Lavreysen in the UCI Track Champions League sprint on Saturday. He will be eligible to return to international competition early in the new year, wearing British colours.
The 25-year-old is a prodigious talent, and backed by the widely admired British cycling program, he may well reach new heights in the years ahead. Given his age, there is every chance the dual national will ultimately succeed his older Dutch foe as the king of the velodrome and win more rainbows and an elusive Olympic gold. But there will always be an asterisk on his glittering career.
If Richardson had wanted to switch nationalities – whether for reasons of head, perhaps a perception that he was more likely to succeed in the British program, or heart – so be it. He could have announced his intention to switch following the Olympics, commenced the paperwork and would be racing in British colours well before the next Games. But by representing Australia at the Olympics while firmly in the process of switching to Britain, the sprinter has let one of his nations down. British Cycling’s complicity in the whole charade deserves condemnation, too.
Richardson has not responded publicly to AusCycling’s statement. But his Instagram profile is telling in its own way. The cyclist’s social media biography lists his achievements: three-time Olympic medallist, two-time Commonwealth champion and a world champion. All crowns won in Australian colours. But in his profile photo, Richardson is wearing a British jersey.
