An Olympic Life tells the story of one of Australia's top athletes - and senior International Olympic Committee member. This fascinating book tells of the tremendous excitements - and the deep disappointments - of life as a leading Australian athlete and medal winner in the Melbourne Olympics of 1956. The story of Kevan Gosper's two careers is also told: the first as a rising executive within Shell Australia and his second later career as a member of the IOC.
At the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Canada, Kevan Gosper was on the field after winning the gold medal in the 440 yards when John Landy lined up for the 'Mile of the Century' duel with Roger Bannister. Soon after he watched as Jim Peters from England lurched into the stadium at the end of the marathon a full ten minutes in front of his competition only to fall, and rise again to his feet twelve times, willed on by the crowd, until he finally collapsed 200 yards from the finishing line, unable to complete the race.
There are frank accounts of the little-known detail of Australia's four bids for the Olympics, culminating in the successful bid for the Sydney 2000 Games An Olympic Life also tells of Gosper's experiences as a senior member of the IOC during previous ongoing turbulent times: the press conference in Seoul that announced Ben Johnson was guilty of doping
Gosper's work on the committee to get South Africa back into the Games
and the bombing and behind-the-scenes chaos of Atlanta's Olympic Games. And Gosper talks openly about what life was like inside the IOC as it was rocked by pay-off scandals of the Salt Lake City bid for most of 1999.
Kevan Gosper was a member of the silver-medal winning Australian relay team in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. He competed in the Commonwealth Games in 1954 and 1958 and the Rome Olympics in 1960. He was chairman and chief executive of Shell Australia for eleven years and is now a vice president of the IOC and the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG). He is also head of the IOC Press Commission and president of the Oceania National Olympic Committee.