Rio a Dream in More Ways Than One for Scudds
The Road to Rio is full of twists and turns, and the occasional pothole, for almost every athlete with an Olympic dream.
Perth’s Sutherlan Scudds can attest to that. Except in his case, the pothole was more of a yawning chasm, one so wide that at times climbing out the other side seemed almost impossible.
In 2013, when he was close to the best form of his fencing career, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Suddenly fencing, and the Olympics, didn’t seem so important.
Fast forward to today, and 25-year-old Scudds is back dreaming of the Olympics. This weekend he’ll compete in the men’s sabre at an Australian Fencing circuit event in Melbourne, where earning points will be crucial if he wants the dream to become a reality.
“I’ve been feeling pretty good,” Scudds said on the eve of competition.
“This year I’ve had a few health issues, mainly with a recurring chest infection that’s kept me away from a lot of training. But I’ve just had about five weeks of training without any health issues, so that’s been good.”
It’s been such a hard slog to get back to full training for Scudds, and it’s probably natural that every time he feels off colour he wonders if it is a side effect of his tumour and subsequent treatment.
“My white blood cell count was back to normal, but it’s hard to tell what toll those chemotherapy drugs take on your system,” he said.
“It all happened when I started pushing back to full-time training after doing part-time training.”
But with less than 12 months until Rio, and with the worst well and truly behind him, he’s plotting his, hopefully, pothole-free road to Olympic selection.
“It has crossed my mind a few times, when I kept getting sick again and again, if I really wanted to keep doing it,” Scudds said.
“But I want to just keep pushing through with it until the Olympics. It might be my last Olympic cycle, so the end is in sight.
“Because of the lack of funding in our sport, I’ve just got to spend a few years after 2016 starting work.”
Scudds has good reason to feel confident about this weekend, and the longer term. He won the last national competition in Adelaide, and he’s had a much better lead-up to this Friday.
And he has a different attitude. When he was a young boy, Scudds was enamoured with Star Wars and Zorro, so it made good sense for his mother to enroll him in fencing.
Now it’s almost like he’s once again wielding a Luke Skywalker lightsaber or Zorro sword.
“My illness changed my perception of life a lot,” he reflects.
“I used to be a person who put a lot into fencing, it was the be all and end all for me as far as life went.
“But after having such a massive health scare, it still meant a lot to me, but it also meant much more about having fun with the sport and enjoying the sport, as opposed to doing it because it was part of my identity.”
The third Australian Fencing Circuit Tournament begins at the Victorian State Fencing Centre in North Melbourne on Friday and runs through until Sunday.
ROSS SOLLY FOR FENCING AUSTRALIA