Russ Haines stands tall after receiving the gold medal in the M45 shot put at the October 1998 Alice Springs Masters Games, where he added six other golds and a silver. He had just come from the triple jump pit, hence his odd shoes. The medal presenter is Aussie legend Dawn Fraser, eight-time Olympic champion swimmer.

Photo by Moving Pictures, Alice Springs

Up on masters Down Under:
An interview with Russ Haines

Russ Haines is the Al Sheahen of Australia. But unlike publisher emeritus Sheahen, whose National Masters News continues under new leadership, Editor Haines saw his quarterly magazine Athletics Courier fold in 2002. “The magazine ceased last year after the national body pulled the pin and hasn’t been replaced by anything of value,” writes Haines, who lives in the Melbourne suburb of Ringwood in southern Victoria state  “Our local athletic clubs tend to look after themselves, most very well, but there is a definite need for a Lawrence of Arabia to pull all the states together so that they're heading in same direction.”  Athletics Courier was a joy – an attractive package of results, editorials, letters, training tips and profiles of star Aussie masters. It also featured book reviews, WMA news, officials’ reports and many photos of athletes Down Under. The end of Athletics Courier doesn’t leave its former leader down, however. He remains engaged to the sport and a savvy observer -- and now edits the newsletter of Victoria vets.

Born January 8, 1953, Haines is an avid supporter of the Australian environment and culture, and recently returned to school. Married with two children, he has two cats (one with three legs) and interests in 1960s and ’70s music, reading and local history. He’s a light aircraft pilot who also does sprint canoeing. “As well, I’m writing a history of my local football club. The book will be published in a year or two.” This interview was conducted in early 2003. 

By Ken Stone   

Masterstrack.com: When did you become involved in masters track – and how did you come to be editor of Athletics Courier, the quarterly magazine for Australian and Oceania vets? 

Haines: My whole life was devoted to athletics when I was young.  I couldn’t stand still for more than 30 seconds. Always running, jumping, pushing and lifting.  By the time I was 18, I was running under 11 seconds for the 100, tossing the javelin just under 60 meters (196-10) and dunking a basketball.  A bad injury forced me to give it all up and I took it “easy” with basketball and sprint canoeing.  Then marriage, children and work filled a sizable gap but I was an extremely fit fellow.  I got involved in masters when I was around 44 and offered to take over the national magazine from the retiring editor. A lot of fun and I got to meet some top people, most of them grass-roots athletes who had three leg replacements and were still running! 

Why was funding cut for Athletics Courier (later renamed Australian Masters Athletics)? What’s been the reaction of Aussies to the loss of their national masters magazine? Any chance of it being revived? 

The funding was cut because, in its present form, it was costing around $2 per issue (in Australian dollars), four times a year.  The national body gets $7 per athlete from each state club.  No attempt was made to reduce costs.  It was replaced with a handbook, full of administration information, and a promise of a Australian Web site, which hasn’t happened. 

To be honest, even though I had only good reports of the content and quality of the magazine, the loss of it hasn’t stopped any athlete competing, which is what it is all about in masters sport.  Some athletes are wondering why they still pay a levy to the national body when they get little from it.  AMA has disappeared into the backroom, and many athletes wouldn’t know who’s on the executive board nor what they do.  In our state of Victoria, we have 18 venues running midweek competitions, our state championships are as big as the nationals and there is a strong social and training aspect.  All this is organized by the venues or VicVets, the State body.   

In Australia, we are registered with local masters/veterans clubs, not Australian Masters Athletics, so the majority of the organizing is done within each state.  The national body ratifies Australian records, oversees the annual national championships and passes on information from WMA.  It meets, at most, two or three times a year so it has limited effectiveness.  Sort of like the guy who puts the labels on peanut butter jars -- has to be done but charges you 10 cents every time.

What is your line of work outside masters track (if you have time for a career)?

I’m a systems programmer, who looks after operating systems on computers, but I specialize in the performance and capacity arenas.  I worked for myself for 15 out of the 33 years I have been in the business, and joined IBM a year or so ago.  

You show up in meet results as a thrower. What are your best masters marks? What performance are you most proud of?

Really I’m a decathlete who hasn’t done much jumping nor speed work in recent years. So that leaves chucking bits of metal around.  I have won the national championships a few times, but the competition isn’t deep in the younger age brackets.

Your magazine rightfully took pride in the performances of your country’s athletes – noting that 234 Aussies traveled to Gateshead WAVA in 1999 – the third-largest foreign contingent after Germany and the United States. The Aussies in 1999 brought home 24 gold, 36 silver and 26 bronze medals (plus three world records). What accounts for the success of masters track in Australia? 

For a relative small country in population, Australia is extremely successful in sport.  I could reel off  world champions we currently have in a number of sports, but I would run out of fingers.  We are involved in so many sports that I could never say that we are more successful in one more than another.  Plus we have Aussie Rules football in the Southern part of Australia that attracts crowds of over 100,000 in my hometown of Melbourne. Australians always love to compete, similar to a country like Sweden -- we love to run, enjoy exercise and make sure we are never beaten. 

Americans have been told that masters track was founded by David Pain of California in the late 1960s, but some masters Down Under argue that Australians originated masters track. Which camp do you belong to? 

David Pain can claim organizing the first official tours of 1972 to Europe, preceded by the inaugural U.S. Masters T&F Championships in 1968.  We certainly had over-age athletes competing at that stage in our local competitions, but nothing formal was organized within Australia.   

The Athletics Courier reflected the aging of the masters population as well as its growth. But in the United States, our monthly National Masters News has grown very little over the years, and may have shrunk in circulation. What’s the Aussie trend? 

The numbers of masters has remained steady over the last 6-8 years -- around 3,300 athletes, allowing for local variations due to world championships.  

Besides being editor of the glossy magazine, you also have been involved in development issues for masters track in Australia. What have you done to grow the movement Down Under and increase its visibility to average Australians?

I have come to realize that the strength of masters athletics lies in small groups around the country.  Here in the state of Victoria we have around 17 weekly venues running nightly competitions.  If these groups expand, then the general membership grows.  Our national body doesn’t contribute to marketing the sport, but even if it did, it would be up to the small groups to maintain interest, competition and satisfy a social need for the more mature athletes.

Australians helped raise the profile of masters track worldwide in a big way in 1999 – when an Aussie female sprinter wrongly accused an American rival,  Kathy Jager, of being a man. Your magazine indicated that WMA President Torsten Carlius made a mistake by making the complaint public (and thus bringing British tabloids running to Gateshead). But your top official, Stan Perkins, defended the action, saying it was the Aussie team’s job to support its athletes. What were your thoughts on this soap opera?

I think that Jager’s Aussie competitors suggested that she ran like a man.  And looking at the times and pictures, I couldn’t dispute that.  She took a banned drug and she copped her punishment. Carlius appeared to be unsure of what to do.  Perkins stuck by the complaint made by the Australian team and this has never proved to be unfounded.  I think the soap opera came later in the U.S. masters press, and of course the Americans are well known for their soap operas. 

Jager was suspended from competition for two years after the Gateshead drug test indicated the presence of a synthetic testosterone found in her menopause medicine. Was WMA right in banning an athlete for taking medicines that her doctor considered necessary for her health and well being? Should WMA rethink its doping policies? 

WMA takes their lead in many things from IAAF.  They don’t appear to have the wisdom -- nor the facilities and finances -- to conduct their own developments and investigations.  WMA could ease their regulations for those substances that older people require.  Mind you, if this happened, and I was serious about winning gold, I would suddenly be menopausal, diabetic and in need of steroids for my drooping appendages.    

In 2005, the World Masters Games in Edmonton, Alberta, will be held about the same time as the WMA world outdoor meet in San Sebastian, Spain. Do you share the concern of some that these multisport festivals will hurt the WMA by stealing some of its best athletes? 

I think they have fixed up the clashing dates, but I would never discount the possibility of Master Games duplicating WMA World Championships, and possible marriage. 

You made some interesting comments about Stan Perkins (Oceania delegate of WMA and principal organizer of the Pan-Pacific Masters Games) and the locale of the Pan-Pac Masters Games -- especially regarding the stress being put on promoting masters games to the detriment of world masters championships. Does this still concern you?

In Australia we have a dozen or so Games run over the country annually, and all relying on the tourist dollar.  Some are very small and they reckon they have done alright if they swap a medal for a stay in the local motel and a few meals. The standard of competition in them is well below athletics-only meets.  Also most people have a financial limit and a limit of time spent on athletics (unless you’re retired).  With the tourist dollar propping these Games up, they have a bigger budget for marketing.  In Australia, an athlete can only afford to pay for attending one or two major meets.  The value of our dollar is not very good, but is very attractive for visitors to our country.  Hardly any Australians will go to Puerto Rico. 

So in that respect, we have an unusual situation in our AMA president (Perkins) being manager of one the biggest Games held in Australia and also charged with the responsibility to promote the national championships.  As I said, the interstate athlete has to choose.  To me this is a conflict of interest that wouldn’t be allowed in public companies or in politics.  To be fair to Stan, I have never seen him use his  position to promote the old Asia Pacific Games.  But, on the other hand, we are not going ahead in over-age athletcs and the Games seem to be winning. 

Some Aussie masters once ran as professionals. That hadn’t been an issue for decades. But do you think it’s possible that masters track could go professional someday? 

In National Masters News, there occasionally appears to be events where money is offered.  I have never thought that masters track is a big draw card and that we could get paying customers through the gates to pay for the prize money.  Professional?  No, I don’t think so -- but, conversely, I see professional Masters Games organizers getting paid very well by the athletes who want to run. Strange turnaround. 

Should the Olympic Games include a few masters exhibition events? If yes, how do we go about getting them in? 

No way in the world would a spectator be interested in eight grayhairs running 23-25 seconds for a 200.  The Olympic Games is reserved for the best in the world, full stop.  I think masters athletics is about participation. 

In America, relatively few masters athletes train with track clubs and compete in team uniforms. Australia appears to have many more clubs available for older athletes. Why is this so?

Our whole system is built on clubs, and we tend to get strength from one another.  Elite individual athletes need special support staff that probably isn’t readily available in Australia. 

American masters officials debated whether to have qualifying standards for national masters championships. Do any Aussie meets have standards? What is/would be the reaction if they did? 

We have had standards one or twice in some of our state and national competitions, trying to eliminate the poorer athlete from winning titles by default.  In the end, this didn’t last long because it was better to have eight average athletes compete in one event than one or two superior ones who met the qualification standards.  Bad idea. 

An important role of WMA is fostering masters track in countries outside the hotbeds of Europe, America and Oceania. Though China has 1.3 billion people, few athletes outside of Hong Kong compete in masters track. (At least we don’t see results from mainland China meets.) Since you’re closer to the situation geographically, what seems to be the problem? 

They work too much making shoes for Puma, while we have leisure time to compete in athletics.  If Chinese had a choice of  running 10k at lunchtime or working an extra hour to pay for food, what would they choose?  As they say on cable, it’s a lifestyle choice. 

Australian sprinter Peter Crombie is a frequent entrant (and winner) at USA national masters meets. Who are some of the other top masters athletes in your country? 

I wouldn’t like to single out any one athlete, as they have overinflated egos, especially the sprinters. Check out some of our recent world champions -- for example, Marie Kay, Dawn Hartigan, Ruth Frith (11 WRs), Rudy Hochreiter and Anton Tesija, who now lives in Yugoslavia and trains a bunch of young athletes.  These are a few of our stars but we have a good depth in most events.  It is just a problem getting them in all in one place at the same timel our athletes are classed as top athletes, only they don’t win every time. 

Prediction time: How many gold, silver and bronze medals will Australian athletes win at the 2003 world WMA meet in Puerto Rico? How many athletes will Australia send to the meet? 

Puerto Rico is extremely expensive for Australians.  We lose on the exchange rate and the amount of distance to travel.  I would doubt any more than 100 Aussies would attend, yet half of those may get medals.  I’ll guess – 14 gold, 22 silver, 23 bronze.