By Vicki Wilson
Walking to school with a friend during the 1976 Montreal Olympics, we pretended we were Nadia Comaneci doing her famous routine on the balance beam. I didn’t want to be a gymnast; as a junior netballer, a very tall one, I was never going to be.
But most people have a first Olympic moment, and that was mine. For a while there, every neighbourhood fence was my stage. Not falling off was almost as good as a medal.
Netball deserves to have its own Olympic moment, in my home city, in 2032. The Brisbane Games provide my sport with its best - probably it’s only - opportunity to join the biggest sports show on earth.
It’s our chance to get international eyeballs on our game. It would be a pivotal moment in netball history.
And, as a proud Queenslander, if that history could be made here in Brisbane, that would be a full circle moment. It’s been one hell of a ride and to see netball shine on that international stage would make me so happy.
I want that for our sport. I want that for the next generation.
As someone who has captained the Diamonds, arguably Australia’s most successful women’s sporting team, I know what it means to represent your country. I’ve seen first-hand what this game means to generations of Australian girls everywhere.
I also know the one dream young netballers have never been able to chase. Brisbane can change that. Elevating a sport that has empowered females for more than a century would resonate far beyond the Sunshine State.
You go back in history and think about the limitations put on female activity, and yet our pioneers pushed through and got this sport off the ground, so to see it develop to where it is today is truly incredible.
With the right platform, we can go much further. I still coach at both the elite and community levels and the chance to be part of Brisbane ’32 is a huge talking point at grassroots carnivals. Everyone’s just saying “think how fabulous inclusion in the Olympics would be for the game’’.
It’s the 16-24-year-olds of today who can be the stars of 2032. They deserve to be.
When I was a kid, my family would gather round the TV every four years at Olympics time, no matter what sport it was. It used to make us just want to get out there. To run faster, jump higher, try harder, try anything.
The 104-cap Diamonds believes netball should be at the Olympic Games.
I never even contemplated that netball might actually be a part of it one day. But then when I was in the Australian team back in the 80s and 90s, we’d always talk about “imagine if it was an Olympic sport. Just imagine what it would be like’’.
Towards the end of a playing career I finished as the Diamonds’ first centurion, I participated in the 1998 Commonwealth Games debut in Kuala Lumpur. Being part of a broader Australian multi-sport team gave us a taste of something bigger than netball, and it was a real pinch-me moment to go ‘‘wow, this is possible’’.
I remember in KL watching our men’s 4 x 200m freestyle relay team set a world record. In the stands we all looked at each other and went “oh my goodness, tomorrow we’re out on court, we’re playing, we’re part of this. This is where we belong’’.
We didn’t feel out of place, and netball would not be out of place on the Olympic stage, either. It’s such a unique sport that requires so many different skills and athletic attributes. There’s nothing else quite like it. People won’t be confused, they’ll be impressed and intrigued.
The good thing about hosting something is the chance to shape it. Show people who you truly are. In Brisbane and Australia that’s both a home of mass netball participation and unmatched elite competition at the top.
How can the Olympic Games come to the engine room of netball and not offer us a seat at the table? Look at softball, which is back in as a medal sport for Los Angeles in 2028, alongside baseball, given the strength of those sports in the US.
Look at cricket, in contrast. It’s the classic example of a Commonwealth-centric sport that will get its Olympic moment in LA in 2028. I just sit back and go “good on cricket’’. That’s a precedent. That gives me hope.
We Queenslanders love sport. That was proven during Covid, when we became a national league hub. But the excitement, the build-up, the evolution of our city with our amazing infrastructure and facilities means that not only will sport be raised to a whole new level at Olympics time, what's left behind will provide for huge future growth.
We missed the boat for Sydney 2000, we were slow off the mark there, given that we’d only just been accepted into the Comm Games two years before. There’s been lots of time to prepare for this, and here we are, rightly, in the conversation. We need to keep pushing, building the groundswell of support.
Within the sport, we’re preaching to the converted in many ways, which is why having champion athletes such as Cate Campbell, Andrew Gaze, Corey Parker and Ian Healy endorse our 2032 inclusion is so important.
Wilson expressed the importance of other sports icons backing the bid.
National polling shows strong local support for the campaign, with almost two thirds of Australians at 66%per cent in favour for netball to be in the Games. As a specialist coach of the Central Pulse in New Zealand, I can also report that our friends across the Tasman are right on board.
I might be able to take a little bit of credit for that, because I talk about Olympic entry non-stop. Everyone says they’re coming to stay at my place when netball’s at the Games. I’ll be running a boarding house just to fit them all in.
I might not be Nadia Comaneci, but if netball gets the nod in 2032, I can see myself doing a little Billy Elliot-style dance down the street here in Brisbane. I’m a bit old to be climbing fences now.
I’m also a believer. I always think positively, so I can picture myself sitting courtside watching netball at the 2032 Olympic Games. And when I do, I’ll just feel so proud of the game, and so proud of Queensland and Australia.
