Johanna Griggs Interview
Get pumped for another amazing interview today as we sit down with the one and only Johanna Griggs, one of the most familiar faces for Australian Olympic fans, to talk about her amazing broadcasting and swimming career! In our longest interview yet, we learn the amazing story of Joh’s swimming career and how lessons she learnt during her time as an athlete were some of the best lessons she learnt in life. We also learn just how she was able to so seamlessly transition from being an athlete into television and the challenges she faced along the way, just why she is still so passionate about live television today as she was when she first started broadcasting, which of her seven Olympics she has covered she rates as the best as well as giving us potentially the greatest Bruce McAvaney story you will ever here. It’s one hell of an interview that you simply can’t miss! So get to listening!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.
BEN WATERWORTH: It is Off The Podium, An Olympics Podcast, coming to you again today for an interview episode. And what an interview we have for you today. You would have heard me tease this one on our last interview with Robert Livingston. Well, don't get teased anymore because you're listening to it right now. Obviously, Johanna Griggs, icon of Australian broadcasting and a former athlete, of course, in the sport of swimming, which again, I think not many people are aware of that Johanna Griggs was a very esteemed swimmer back in the day. And this is an amazing chat. This is our longest interview. I'm sure you've seen that with a timestamp when you've downloaded. But every second of this is pure, pure gold. Jo goes into a lot of details about her athletic career, how she got into broadcasting, some great stories about likes of Bruce McAvaney, Basil Zemplas, so many great things. Dale Begg Smith is talked about in this interview. Queen Chloe Esposito is talked about in this interview. There's so much here that you will thoroughly enjoy that I'm going to shut up and hand over to myself to introduce Jo properly. Here is our chat with the one, the only Johanna Griggs.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm so excited to bring you our next guest here on Off The Podium. As you've heard over our last few weeks with our interviews, it's not just the athletes we're getting on the show, we're getting some people who, of course, are a bit more behind the scenes, a bit more on the journalistic or the broadcast side of the Olympics to learn a little bit more about their stories. But I think we've combined the two today, because not only do we have one of the most recognizable faces on Australian TV when it comes to broadcasting the Olympics over the last 10 to 20 years, we also have a former athlete who was so close to the Olympics herself, a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist. And I'm sure if things had have gone a different way, would have been one of the most dominant forces on the Olympic scene had that turned a different direction. I am so thrilled to be able to learn a little bit more about her athletic career and a broadcasting career and everything else in between. The one, the only, Johanna Griggs. Jo, welcome to Off The Podium.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Thank you, Ben. It's such a pleasure to be here. Oh gosh, I hope I can live up to that intro. That was pretty special, so I could have tried coming here today now.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, well, we always like to put the pressure on our guests straight away to try and sort of, we're a very high pressure show here, Jo.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: It's all right, Ben. We're used to putting the pressure on athletes as well. Like I think I was almost vomiting in a bucket the day that we had built the Ariane Titmus, Katie Ledecky battle to the point of stratospheric pressure. And I was feeling so ill because so often we've done that in the past, and it doesn't actually live up to those expectations. But that was one of the few where you came off having watched what actually transpired, certainly for that first 400. And it was just, it surpassed expectations. So I figure out somebody else is due to do that to me.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, you're welcome. You know, we always talk about Channel 7 during the Olympics, and now it's time to put it back on Channel 7 right now. Here we go. It's our chance to shine and off the podium, which I mean, you and I were just sort of talking a little bit off air and sort of, you know, constantly when you're doing interviews and sort of media appearances, you're often no doubt talking about Better Homes and Gardens, House Rules, kind of, you know, all the shows you're doing. But is your swimming career something that you often get asked about in terms of just media interviews? That people kind of want to learn a little bit more about your life before your broadcasting career?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: No, not really. I mean, I obviously have to do a lot of public speaking, and I speak about it because, you know, apart from my Comm Games bronze medal, I got a silver at the world. I was number one in the world on a number of occasions. And despite popular opinion, I actually didn't retire because I was ill. I had been very sick for two and a half years, but I actually finished at number one in the world when I retired. And I think I tell the story about it because, one, it surprises people that you actually had that part of your life. It was such a short part of my life. I mean, I, you know, swam probably for Australia over a period of about, you know, five to seven years, whereas I've been in the media now for 29 years straight. So it's such a small part of my life. But funnily enough, every skill that I have learnt that I think is really, really valuable in my everyday activities and the everyday way that I run my life was ironically learnt from swimming. It was learnt through sport. So, you know, I learnt invaluable things like time management. I learnt how to accept criticism. I mean, part of your relationship with the coach is he's there to tell you what you're not doing right and how to improve it. So you get very good at being able to acknowledge what's working, also acknowledge what's not working, but be able to leave that behind and move forward. And the funniest things, I learnt how to sleep, which is one of the most valuable skills that I have in my life. I learnt a lot about mental health, which is my whole life away from sport and television that I do through my work with Beyond Blue. So all of that came through that period of sport through those developing years. I was 14 on my first Australian team. I retired at 19, having not really had much of an education. I only had a couple of months of education in total in high school. So there's lots of messages that I feel that I can say to families and to kids about understanding that life, sometimes you've got to work out what you want to do. Sometimes it's equally important to work out what you don't want to do. But the biggest thing is not being afraid to try something different. And if you don't like it, change it. And funnily enough, that's everything I learned through sport. And yeah, I've got great memories. It was a fantastic time. I'm not traumatised by that time. I loved every second of it. I got to see the world 17 times before I was 17 years of age. So it was a great sport and a great lifestyle. But it also probably was the period of my life that I learnt more about myself that I still value the most in my life. Even now, I'm talking to you, I turned 48 in October. I value the years of what I learnt through sport more than any other period in my life as far as what I learnt about myself, my strengths, my weaknesses, and how to like myself. Because for a long period of that time, I was quite sick. And when you spend a lot of time by yourself, you really have to make peace with yourself. And I think that some of those things, qualities that actually carried me through everyday life now that I'm most grateful for.
BEN WATERWORTH: When you got into swimming, was it something that you just picked up at a young age? Were you very sporty, kind of doing multiple different sports? I mean, what was it that led you to swim and then ultimately kind of stick with swimming to eventually swim for Australia?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Probably not like a lot of swimmers I learnt to swim because I was a mathematic. So it was fantastic to help for your breathing with damp water. I did a million different sports, which is quite ironic because I am actually one of the most uncoordinated people that you will ever come across in life. Like I can look at a doorway and go, I will walk through that doorway and then literally smack bang into the wall frame. Anyone who knows me who works with me now is like, how are you an athlete? So I often say, look, I was good in water. I'm just terribly ungifted on dry land, except that I was in so many state teams as a youngster, I had to be good at some point. So that has to have come as I've got older. But I actually ended up, I'd always swum with my parents. We lived on the Northern beaches. We spent a lot of time in the country. So we were always near dams and rivers. And so our parents were very adamant that we all had to learn how to swim. And their rule was that you had to swim safely so that you understood how surf worked and rips worked. And I like our captain freshwater Surf Life Saving Club as a junior. And at the time I got poached by Manny, which was a big deal. Not really having any understanding of what that meant at the time to those people, but it was just having fun with my mates. And we would spend countless hours in the water, around the water, and obviously swim training. As far as meets, I'd always swum through school. It had swum, we weren't really allowed to swim more than sort of one session a week for a very long time. And I actually went to a swim meet with somebody else from my team for the first time, because my parents didn't feel like I should be going into competitions at that point. And it was at a swim meet with another family friend that I was like, oh my God, this is awesome. And almost immediately was talent scouted. And there was a great battle, I was one of four kids, and there was a great battle that ensued between my parents who believed kids should be kids, and the swim coaches who felt that I had such a natural raw talent that I should be training more. And I wasn't allowed to train more than three sessions a week until I was 14. And then from 14, basically jumped from that to six to 10 hours a day, six days a week, and was on the Australian team from 15, I think was my first trip through Australia, and that was it. And we were in an era where there was a big chip on the shoulder from Australians to me, like funnily enough, now the world comes to Australia. They come because they know how great our athletes are, how great our coaching systems are in place, how fantastic our coaches themselves are. But back then, we would just travel endlessly and constantly, which, you know, I thought you were an amazing lifestyle as a young kid to see the world, but, you know, they are so much smarter. And the other thing that we did back then is we over trained massively. Like I was a sprinter and we did the same amount of training that a marathon swimmer would do. I mean, it's complete madness. I actually love these days when I go into stories on, you know, the current batch of athletes and you see how far the sports science has come and how far the knowledge has grown and how they spend so much time working on, you know, transition areas like a tumble turn or a start. And it's all about explosive training. Whereas we were kind of at the end of that era where you just had to flog athletes to death to see who was still left standing at the end of it. So there was lots of good and lots of bad that came out of it as far as I don't think I probably would have been as sick as I was if I wasn't given antibiotics as often as I was back then. I mean, I hardly had antibiotics in the years since I stopped swimming. I'm really conscious of what I feed myself and how I live my life and how much sleep I get. And yet back then, if we used so much as sneeze, we were given a box of antibiotics. So it's funny, it's just a different era at a different time. And I reckon anyone from my era would be able to relate to it because thank God, they've got smarter and cleverer with how they approach sport and how professional they all are these days. But I'm still grateful that we got to experience it because I still have great friendships from that period. And I overridingly have great memories.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's so fascinating to hear all that because I grew up in the 90s and the 2000s and looked at, I like to think, it was the golden era of swimming and some of the names that you had in that period. Other people on the Australian team around then, Haley Lewis, Nicole Livingston, Lisa Karakeni, obviously Kieran Perkins is just starting out then, Susie O'Neill, people moving forward into the 90s. And that led on to the Thorpes, the Clems, the Trickets and the Joneses and all that kind of stuff. So, I mean, it must have been just such a unique period to kind of be involved in, where you're swimming up against these people who would go on to become household names and often competing them very well, beating them in some aspects. So, I mean, do you learn a lot from these people that really now are very much household names for different reasons why you're a household name?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Yeah, it's funny like that. I mean, I remember rooming actually with Lisa Curry Kenny and Julie McDonald at the 1990 Commonwealth Games. I'd just turned 16. I was the second youngest in the team. I think Hayley Lewis was the youngest. She was still 15 years, and I'd just turned 16. And you had this woman who, you know, 1990 Commonwealth Games, she was just a rock star, Lisa Curry Kenny. She was obviously still with Grant. They had all the young kids. They were on pool deck. I mean, we were just watching it like it was, it was like you were watching a crazy movie being played out because you watch her as the athlete and you watch how professional she was. And she was very strong-willed and strong-minded with the athlete, the coaches of the time because of what she'd experienced, you know, in the 20 years leading up to that. But then you just watch this absolute circus that would happen when she would appear on pool deck and how she handled all that. So yeah, you just sort of sat back and went, wow, that is just a different level to anything that we will probably ever experience. And yeah, I think one of the great things about sport, you watch and you learn all the time. And I still do it when I'm watching athletes compete now. I mean, I find it fascinating to see how the athletes approach modern day sport and all of the challenges that come with it. I think the debate around mental health at the moment, you know, with athletes like Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles is absolutely fascinating. I think we're gonna see a lot more of that. But even though 17 years I did the tennis, I always found it more interesting, almost like I love watching tennis players on the court, but to see how they were underneath the tunnels and to see which tennis players needed two people and which tennis players needed 16 people. You know, it's no different to when you were competing. There were personalities that needed a lot of attention. There were personalities that needed virtually zero. But as always in sport, it's actually not necessarily, you know, people draw on all those things or they draw on the response of the crowd, but it is truly the battle that they have between their two ears as to whether or not they are successful. And I don't think you ever stop being fascinated by that. It's part of the appeal of sport.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, that's one thing I always like to sort of speak to athletes on the show here. It's so long good to learn about the physical aspect and the training and everything, but it's kind of that mental aspect. And obviously different sports are, you know, different scenarios around what you've got to do that. But I mean, what was that like back when you were competing? The mental aspect was a sports psychologist, something that was around back then, or was it kind of, you know, still freshman kind of, how would you deal with the mental aspect of swimming back in the day?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Well, it's so strange because I often get asked for it now, I've been on the board of Beyond Blue for seven years, and I get asked about it often, and I say, I'm so grateful I had the coach that I had Paul Hardman when I spammed, because he was very, I now realise, very progressive. He very much had the attitude that you did not have good physical health unless you had good mental health and vice versa. And I 100% subscribed to that. You actually can't just have one and think you're gonna get through life okay. So whenever I would feel completely overwhelmed, and because I went from nothing to everything, there were plenty of times where I felt overwhelmed as an athlete. That would be the sort of stuff that we were encouraged to actually use, and I would use without a moment's hesitation. What blows me away is that kind of continued on into my life as I went along every time. When I failed my first marriage, that was a really confronting time. So of course, I sought help, and I have it every other time in my life whenever I've felt vulnerable or overwhelmed or just need clarity and have a bit of a fog in my head. And I don't even think twice about it. And I say it so often, and I kind of watch people react in a room and they're like, oh, it's amazing that someone with your profile would say that. I'm like, but why isn't everyone saying that? We all go to the doctor if there's, if physically we've got something wrong with ourselves, or if you have an injury, you don't hesitate to go and get the treatment you need for an injury. And I don't, because it wasn't the world I was brought up in, I don't get why when they can get so much relief and so much clarity and so much help to take the steps to feel very strong and very clear why anyone would hesitate. So again, that's what I learned through swimming. And I'm so grateful because the more that I work in that mental health area, I realised that there are so many people who struggle with taking that first step. And I just feel like we're wrapping them up and going, it's amazing. All those things that you're worried about are built up in your own mind. The second that you take that first step, it's like the first step to your world feeling lighter. And it really, it's something, one, I'm thankful for through swimming, but two, I just drive home to people all the time. So, you know, I watch athletes, tennis is an interesting thought because you see a game see-saw so quickly from one way to the other, and it can be the smallest thing that triggers athletes. And, you know, I think about speeches I've heard from other great athletes and years ago, Linford Christie, who now obviously has a very dubious record, but when he was at the top of his game, he came and spoke to us all at Narrowbeam, where we trained at, where is now the New South Wales Institute of Sport. And I remember him sort of saying a trick that they would use in athletics, would be everyone's focus, everyone's absolutely on the finish line, they're all doing their own thing, they're all mentally getting themselves ready. And so what you do is just take a tiny bit of the surface off, which is a little bit of rubber, put it into the lane next to you, just throw it, and you watch that person's focus go from the finish line to that. And I remember the time just thinking, what, that's outrageous. But you realise stuff like that happens all the time, whether it be someone from a crowd, whether it be no crowd like we just saw in Tokyo, whether it be pressure and individuals putting on themselves, how they respond to that. Some people pressure responds mentally, sometimes it responds physically. And that to me is the endless fascination with those athletes that are able to compartmentalise, the athletes that are able to take a bit more control of their destiny, the other ones that are so raw that we go along that journey with them. And I'm thinking just in the last few weeks, like it was so lovely to see Emily Seabom with that moment of realisation when she got that individual medal after so long and what that meant to her. And that was more than a window of what that race meant to her. That's what the last 20 years have meant to her and everything she's gone through and everything that she's loved and everything that she has had those nights where she's lying awake in bed about. And I think it's why I absolutely love being back in the chair doing sport because sport always, to me, 99% of the time is positive. And even if there is a negative story, you can generally get a story of redemption out of it. And you think about it, I was losing sleep over whether the Olympics should go ahead this time around. I was having arguments with my bosses as to whether we were part of the problem because we were gonna be broadcasting the Olympics. And I had spoken to so many athletes who were frustrated and so sick of having the conversation about whether or not the games would go ahead. And just that, you know, it's human nature. People are inquisitive and they wanna hear it directly from that person. But when that person's been asked that question 50 times in a day, and they actually can't get respite, and you can say everything in the world about taking five minutes for yourself, but when that five minutes is still somebody asking you a question, I think I, like many other people, really were questioning what we were doing to the athletes, what we were doing to the Japanese people, and Japan as a country, and whether it was the right thing to do. And yet I can remember being three quarters of the way through the first day and just finding myself smiling like, I don't know, that I was just giddy with excitement and just so grateful that it had actually gone ahead for all the benefits that you got a sense of that first day, but you could never have imagined the impact that it would have had on our nation and across the world to give people a sense of hope and a great distraction. So again, sport kind of came to the fore with all the things that you don't always think about when you think about athletes trying to be the fastest or the quickest or get the highest points.
BEN WATERWORTH: When it comes to sort of just the feelings and emotions around Olympics in general, when you were at your peak, you'd bronze at Commonwealth Games, silver at the World Championships, was it kind of just the progression that you were aiming towards in an Olympics? Is that sort of what was always a lot of your focus as a swimmer or is it something that kind of, it came to you as you were competing at the highest level that, hey, maybe I can achieve in Olympic Games?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Oh, I think once you start setting goals and you start getting results, you would be absolutely lying if you ever said that you didn't want to be an Olympian. And I think that was, I tried to make the point in the opening ceremony preamble, it's so rare to be an Olympian, it's such rare air. And when you think, you know, like with the argument about whether or not the game should or shouldn't go ahead, like that was done and dusted. But you know, going into, I haven't done the numbers since then, but going into the Rio Olympics, only 74% of athletes will go to more than one games. So for 74% of all those athletes that went there for Australia, that was their one shot at glory. Now, you know, I say to them, I wasn't able to do that. So my story was I finished with the silver medal at the 91 Worlds. I got really, really sick. I spent most of that next year getting better. I got better. I got back to a point where I could train. I probably just pushed it too early, which is not also a common story with athletes that are striving to be the best because you've got a deadline of a day. And I ended up, because they changed the backstroke turns in that time, they changed them from where we used to touch a wall and turn around to where you see now, which is like they are allowed to flip over, do a freestyle tumble turn and flip off. And I hadn't done a lot of race practice with it, but at that point in my life, so I had two and a half years on a wheat-free, yeast-free, egg-free, corn-free, malt-free, sugar-free, beef-free, dairy-free, herb-free, spice-free, caffeine-free diet.
BEN WATERWORTH: A lot of free stuff in there.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: There's a lot of free stuff, but not a lot of good stuff, let me tell you. And I'd gone from six to 10 hours of training a day to at least six to eight hours of treatments a day. I had, at that point when I was back training, I was sleeping with a heart rate monitor on, and if I woke up and my heart rate was above a certain level, I wasn't allowed to train or compete. And we were doing that because we knew that internally, my body had been under a lot of stress, and we knew what markers look out for. And I chose to swim and meet when I'd woken up when my markers were through the roof, which were indicating to everyone that I was obviously a bit under the weather and battling something and not to take the risk. And I sat down and actively debated and chose to take the risk and swim and meet in Canberra. And three days later, I was back in hospital with pleurisy. And basically that was the last two weeks going into the Olympic trials. And I had to make the call to pull out of the Olympic trials. And at the time it was a massive news. And because of the results I'd had, we had people like Alan Jones at the time was trying to start a massive campaign about how ridiculous the swimming rules were and how they should have chances where you could change it. Whereas as an athlete, it's funny like you can have all the debate in the world, but as an athlete, you know when the trials are on and you know if you can't do the trials, that that's what you give up. So even though it was a difficult decision, I knew what it meant. And I was actually almost mortified at the debate around it because I didn't want anyone to think it was me asking for that. I wasn't asking for that because I know there was some other athlete who was gonna be right for it. And so a part of that was just mortifyingly humiliating because I just didn't want people to know. I just wanted to be able to deal with that. And the other part was also being a little bit flatter that anybody would take up the fight for it. And it's kind of funny how many years, all these years later, they finally changed the way that they do swimming trials and they've changed some of the rules around it. But for me, I went away and I didn't even look at a pool for six months. And by that stage, we had a lot of doctors who were recommending that I not go back to swimming. And I decided after about eight months away that I wanted to go back, that I didn't want to do it for anyone else. I just wanted to prove to myself, I had been really healthy until I made that decision that weekend, that if I did it all exactly the same as we'd been doing, and if I was really extraordinarily disciplined, and I did in Australia, we worked with one coach who was on board with it and we changed our program. So that was the first time that we didn't do a million kilometres every single week. We turned it to more explosive training. We turned it to more sprint-specific training. We cut down the number of hours in a pool. We cut down the numbers of dry land, but still doing everything right medically. And I got to the trials in 1993 and hit the wall, the fastest time of the world, got the most extraordinary reception, had everyone in the stands, and there were all the officials hugging me and kissing me, and lots of my peers so happy for me. And I always remember somebody saying, oh, you're back. And I remember thinking, no, mate, that's it. I'm only proving it to myself. And I knew, and my coach knew, ironically, he's in a full grandstand, which is weird to think of full grandstands even in the current day.
BEN WATERWORTH: What are those?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I spotted him, and he just had a tear down his face because he also knew that that was it. And I always remember bringing my mum afterwards, and by that stage, it was a good news story. So I was going everywhere, and my mum was like, how are you feeling? And I said, oh, mum, I'm done. And just hearing my mum's voice going up just a couple of octaves, and she's like, okay, so darling, that's wonderful. And what are you going to do now? And from her point of view, she was a schoolteacher, who had a kid who'd only had a couple of months education, who's retiring at the grand old age of 19, with no qualifications and no prospects to go ahead. And I was just like, oh, my mum, I might give television a try. And the funny thing about that is I now know how many athletes say that and how many of them hope for it. I also know how incredibly rare those opportunities are. And my situation within 24 hours, I had a contract offer from seven, nine and 10. And ironically, chose seven way back then the first time because they promised me training. And I had enough of an ego that I didn't want to do anything badly. And the first rule of television is that they'll say anything to get you to sign a contract. But in actual fact, they lie through their teeth because I wasn't ever given training. I was just thrown in the deep end and basically learnt by public humiliation for those first few years.
BEN WATERWORTH: Wow, that's crazy. That's so crazy to hear that story. Although I also believe you were very close to an acting career because you were on Home Away. So I mean, how did that nearly happen?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: No, no, no, not close. So to give you a nutshell, in that six months that I first had off after I'd pulled out of the trials, I signed with Vivian's modelling agency just because I needed money to come in and had this great career where they worked out very quickly. I was great for commercial, not great for catwalk because I think I actually walked and fell off the end of one of the first catwalks that I did. And they were like, yeah, let's not get you walking. And so part of what they sent me to was an audition for Home and Away, which was just like on those days, you just get where you were called to and off you go. And ended up having to play for the day Inga from Sweden, who was a backpacker who was trying to steal Bobby's husband. Yeah, Swedish backpacker. And of course, years when I did it was just like hilarious fun. We got a good laugh out of it at the time. Didn't really think anything of it. But of course, when I started back at seven, it was like, I knew I did not want that to surface. So I made a part of my negotiations very early on, but I owned every copy outside of the master tape. And literally for 25 years, no, it was like a legend in television. People knew about it, but no one could find it. And I had lots and lots of people try and find it. And people who had contacts in news libraries and contacts on the home and away, and it didn't happen. And then I woke up on April 4th day a couple of years ago, and I opened up social media in the morning and I literally started to hyperventilate because somebody had put up a picture, a freeze frame of me as Inga from Sweden with Bobby and said, you know, holy shit, it was Joe Griggs seven on home and away. And the funny thing is by the time I got to work, I just started giggling, by the time I got to work, everyone at work was talking about it. They were all just absolutely giving it to me, all my crew and they thought it was the funniest thing. And then we got a phone call from seven and it was the head of publicity who was sitting with the head of home and away publicity. And they said, look, we realise it's an April day's full joke, but we still have to do the right thing and check with you. But we've gone through the records, we can find nothing of it. You weren't actually on home and away, were you? And all the team behind me just roared with laughter and went, yes, you are! And so they said to me, well, Griggs, this is too good not to actually go to town on. And so I woke up the next morning and the front page of the Daily Telegraph was, Jo Griggs has lost soapy tape. And so I just, it could have been worse. It could have been a sex tape.
BEN WATERWORTH: You wake up and see a front page of a newspaper, you know, Jo Griggs lost tape. Yeah, you don't want sort of another word in there.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: You don't want another word. And honestly, I reckon I did not do one FM radio interview for about, for the literally up until about a year ago. They've kind of got sick of it now, but I would, they do an intro and then you hear, it was like, you know, bad 70s porn song music as they panned up your legs. And, and, and they'd be like, oh my goodness. I just laugh because even at my husband's 40th, we actually found a recreation of the dress. And we actually did a split screen for his 40th birthday where it was Inga from Sweden, you know, back in 1990, I think we filled it, or 91, and, and then, you know, my husband's birthday and we did a split screen event. It was just, I ended up having a conversation with Inga asking this, you know, Swedish ho to go to bed once and for all and never come back. And it's given us a lot of, a lot of mileage out of those last few years.
BEN WATERWORTH: Fantastic. Oh gosh, a lot. I need to see this now.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Well, yeah, I was asked to do another show and I was asked to do like a musical. And my manager was like, Oh man, she can't act. And they're like, Oh no, no, no, we really, we think she'd be great. And then she's like, let me just send you this tape. And so ironically, it's actually stopped me from doing anything else in that world because I'm so bad at trying to be somebody else. So I think it actually, funny enough, made me work out what I did want to do in my career, what I didn't want to do. And that's just as important for kids to learn.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, we'll say this right now, you and Chris Hemsworth are, you know, familiar people then, because you've both been on Home and Away. So take that as a positive, right? You both got that on your resume.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: No, I think Chris can act.
BEN WATERWORTH: He couldn't when he was on Home and Away. Let's be honest. He's developed those skills over the years.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Your words, not mine.
BEN WATERWORTH: I don't want you to speak out against Channel 7, but I'll gladly own that. Before I talk a little bit more about your broadcasting career, I clearly am not an Olympian. I clearly did not go anywhere with swimming, but my stroke of choice was always backstroke. I always just enjoyed backstroke. Still, to this day, if I go swimming in a pool, I do backstroke because I just always enjoyed it. How do you choose that preference? Is it a case of your body suited for it, you enjoyed it more? Because backstroke is one of these ones that I feel that not many people go with anymore. And I'm like, why? Backstroke is a great stroke.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Pretty sure Kayleigh McHugh might have something to say about that.
BEN WATERWORTH: But it took us all this time to win a gold medal in backstroke.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Look, to be honest, I think it's what you're good at. I was really high in the water in backstroke, and anyone who knows me well has always said that the reason I chose backstroke was it was the only stroke that you could actually talk the whole way along while swimming. And other people like to joke and they go, my god, you're the only person who gets rewarded for going backwards. Actually, there's about eight sports you go backwards in, but okay. But to be honest, it was just what felt natural. It still feels natural. Like, I get very frustrated if I go on the water these days because swimming is a sport where even if you're at the elite level, you can miss a week because you have a cold, and you can basically just feel like you are two foot under the water from where you need to be. It doesn't take long to get back to feeling great, but I like how high in the water you can feel with backstroke. And for me, it comes really, really easy. I was backstroke and freestyle, but I enjoyed backstroke more, and I still look probably a bit like you even if I'm in the surf. I'll swim a couple of strokes freestyle, but I always find that I end up turning over onto my back and just liking how it feels and liking the movement.
BEN WATERWORTH: Was it a surprise that when Kayleigh won the gold in Tokyo that, I mean, that was our very first ever backstroke gold when she went into it too? Because I remember we were talking that during the games. It's a surprising fact that this has taken Australia.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: And the gold had got a bronze years before, but it was just her and Kayleigh. Yes, no, I mean, I grew up vitalising people like Lisa Forrest, who was phenomenal, but hadn't had that same success at the Olympic level. She'd done really well at the Commonwealth level. But as always for me, it was about who she was as a person and what I related to is who, as she was, you know, we got to meet her lots of times when we were young growing up, and she was so generous as a human being. And I think I still judge the athletes, which was what was so great about Tokyo, was there was so much heart shown by our athletes and so much team rapport that was so palpable to the viewing audience, because even though we're broadcasting it, you're still just watching it, and you're just there for the ride. And you know, those moments like Kayleigh and Em on the blocks or how gracious Carl Chalmers was in his post-race interview where I heard another interview with him the other day. He said, you know, it took him a couple of days just to realise he had done his best time by half a second. It just, other people were better than him. And I don't know, those moments of graciousness or hearing Kate Campbell talk about what her individual meant or, you know, those moments where you're watching athletes care about each other, whether it be Katie Ledecky and Ariane, the respect instantly shown amongst them for what they're both achieving in the sport. They're the things that actually stay with you. And I think they would stay with not just people who love sport, but anyone who's watching it. Like, I bet they could tell you about the gold medal that was shared by the high jumpers in athletics, or they could tell you about Cedric Troubler with Ash Maloney and the decathlon. You know, they transcend sport, and I think that's, to me, that's the appeal of sport. It often transcends just the sporting activity, and they're the things that you remember long after.
BEN WATERWORTH: When you think about some of the greatest sports stories that have been turned into movies, you know, Cool Runnings, you know, Eric the Eagle, then you have Eric the Eel in Sydney and kind of all those sort of moments like that that really kind of do that. I have a vivid memory as a child, actually, with Matt Welsh. I was shopping in Hobart, and he must have been there for like some sort of appearance. I think it was just after Sydney. And he was sort of setting up the table and everything. And I just don't think people knew who he was. And I straight away, I'm like, it's Matt Welsh. Like, you know, I love him. You know, I was a little kid, you know, Olympic fan boy. So I've gone straight up to him and gotten the autograph and all that sort of stuff. And just that humble nature kind of of Matt at the time. And it's sort of memories like that that you kind of have with athletes, I think, as a kid that really stick with you and kind of you grow up.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: If you have a bad experience, they also stick with you. That's what they say. Sometimes it's better never to meet your idols in that horrible incident that you might actually be disappointed. But for my part, I reckon 98, 99% of the time, athletes are incredibly down to earth because no matter what their life becomes, they still have to do the work and they still have to turn up and they still have to engage with the people. And most of them who have a crazy life talk to you about those moments where they're engaging with their peers is actually the most normal aspect of their life. It means even more to them.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, actually, I have a story on the page just while we're on that topic about you. Like, this is a true story. So when my mum was alive, this was, I think, you'd come to Hobart for a segment for Better Homes and Gardens, and I believe you were doing like a filming day at Bunnings or something like that. So my mum had gone there with my dad and kind of, I think she told the story about how she saw you there and she's a bit nervous, like, oh, you know, I want to meet her, but you know, oh, she's not approachable, she's a TV star. Anyway, long story short, she went up to you, got a photo taken with her, and she just would glow about how nice and normal and down-to-earth, I couldn't believe this. This was just the nicest thing. And to the day she died, whenever she'd talk about sort of famous people that she'd met and that, you were always listed up there as one of the best people she met. So you left an impact on somebody just like that.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Thank you. Well, first of all, I'm sorry that she's no longer with you, but I am really proud of the fact that everything that I do in my life and everything I do on the shows I work on, I've drilled that into everyone because sometimes people forget the way it works. It's the same as with athletes. They're doing what they're great at. I'm doing something that I love. And I only am lucky enough to keep doing that because people are good enough to watch. So at some point, some people will lose that chain and they think, oh, no, everyone should be thanking me because I'm doing something fabulous. No, it shouldn't be that. Everything I work on, I say to everyone, I don't care if it takes us an extra two hours to get our shooting done, but we stop when you talk to every individual. And you remember to thank them, and you remember to always remember the order and remember that you only have it because of them. And so I kind of choose to live my life like that anyhow, choose to live my life by a lot of very strict rules. Again, most of them that I learnt through swimming. But I would like to think that one of them is actually being kind to other people, which I always say to kids, it's one of the easiest and most simple things that you can do, but it's amazing how some people do forget that along the way. But that's a lovely story. Thank you for sharing.
BEN WATERWORTH: One of the earliest memories I have of seeing you on TV, and I'm sure it's the same with one of your first main roles, was your time on Sportsworld. I used to get up on a Sunday morning and just ring- We were talking about football. It was my Sunday morning tradition getting up. It was that, and then sort of book ended by watching the Sunday Footy Show. It was just such a great morning, Sunday morning. What were the memories like on that? And taking that sports love that you have to be able to translate onto a show like Sportsworld must have been incredible.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: It's funny you say that because I'm back in Melbourne, obviously hosting the Olympics and Paralympics. And so most of my crew on the floor are the crew that I had for the six years I hosted Sportsworld. And I actually originally started out as a reporter on Sportsworld going back 29 years ago. And we were all just saying, we missed having magazine length stories about athletes and getting, yes, the pictures can help tell the story, but hearing from athletes themselves, which is, as I was saying to you before as well, a podcast so much because you can do it in that longer format. But it was such a great time. It was like we all miss having that on free-to-air TV, definitely. And the networks these days, they just won't invest the money. It takes the other expensive shows to make. They have also convinced themselves that everyone in the world only wants to watch things in three to six minutes, maybe seven minutes, maybe eight minutes of your really lucky increments. And they're getting shorter and shorter because the demands of social media. But the funny thing is, my favourite thing is to sit and watch a documentary, or my favourite thing is to sit and watch a 30-30, or whatever it is out of the states where they still spend the money and invest that time. It was such a great program to be involved with, and it was such a great time in my life. I remember my boys were obviously very young, and I was a single mum. And I remember just wondering how I was going to do it being away every weekend. And Neil Kearney, who is just one of the greatest storytellers in sport of all time, just said to me, don't feel good. You will end up cherishing this time, not just because it will feed the sports lover in you, but also you will love the time that you get to just have by yourself. And there was so much truth in that, in the sense that, you know, I would do kids' sport on a Saturday morning. I'd jump on a plane. I'd stay up all night every night. I'd catch up on every match, every bit of vision that I hadn't seen. I'd have a thousand things I could go in at 3 o'clock in the morning and have a million ideas for the show or workshop. We just had great people who were still some of my closest friends today that we would just shoot ideas and, you know, work out how we were going to do it. And it was such a fun thing. And then because I was a female in sport, I was a co-host initially with Dermot, and then I did a year with Sandy Roberts, I think a year with Matt White. And then eventually they were just like, actually, we just want you to do it yourself. And I think the first night of the first season that I was hosting myself, I actually burst an ovarian cyst in my hotel room at 3am. And I remember thinking I was actually dying. And I rang my mum and I just said to her, I'm sorry, mum, I think this is it. I actually, I can't move and I'm in so much pain. And, you know, we've got a doctor coming. But in case this is it, I just want you to know how much I love you. And I just remember them just going, so there's no plan B. So we're going to get the doctor just to pump you full of painkillers. And if you could just come into work as per normal, we'll just, we really need you to stay on air. And so I did that first show that year, absolutely off my head on painkillers. I think I got to the last segment and just felt really woozy. And in just so much pain, and had to have a special dispensation to fly back home and just remember getting home and just thinking, well, that was weird. But this is like to see me, people don't ever say, they talk about all the things I haven't think, but you're not allowed to be sick. You just work.
BEN WATERWORTH: Do this, you've got a contract, we need you.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: It's fascinating to see what will happen as a legacy of COVID because they actually can't do that at the moment. But that is the only time in 29 years where if somebody is sick, I see them go, okay. Whereas every other time, whether you have had pneumonia, whether you've been sick as can be, whether you've got a migraine and you're vomiting five seconds before you go and say hello to homeowners, you are still to work. So it's funny, like we all laugh about it now when you look back on it, but at the time you're just going, okay, this is a little bit weird.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Well, a long way from the Inga days, basically, how that's changed. But I mean, do you find, like, I know with my radio days, if I have a preference, I want to do live radio. There's nothing to me like it in the world. Is it the TV thing as well? Like you want to do live TV wherever you can?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: 100%. And I'm lucky, like I've had such a diverse career, which is probably why I've worked. So I've worked in news twice. I've worked obviously a lifestyle now for 18 years with Better Homes and Gardens. I've done seven Olympics. This will be my second Paralympic Games I'm about to go into. I've done reality, which is probably my least favourite out of all those formats by a long shot. But you have this incredibly diverse approach to media and what works and what doesn't work. But I think what you love about live sport is it's the closest feeling you ever get to being an athlete, because when it goes well, you have that one shot at it. When it goes well, which is very rare that you ever got off air and think you've had the perfect day. They are far and few between. But when you come off air and you're really happy with how it went, it is the most satisfying feeling. And as I say, closest that you have to competing well and finishing with something that's measurable. But the same flip side to it, probably the same as an athlete, is when it goes terribly wrong and you haven't been able to get yourself out of trouble and you just know you're going to copper hiding. It's the most soul-destroying feeling, which is why it makes those exhilarating moments feel so good. I think my only fear, like I love it more than anything, and I've just loved being back doing it again for the Olympics and I love it for the Paras. But it's... I worry with society that we... And maybe it's the introduction of social media and the role it now plays in a lot of people's lives is what they have lost is the ability to make mistakes. I literally learnt through public humiliation and by making mistakes. And I would go into my boss's offices and say, I'd be so frustrated because no one would tell me the right way to do something or what wasn't allowed to be done or what the rules were of television. If they did that, it would make my job really, really a lot easier. Instead, I would just do or say something on air and then my earpiece, they'd be like, what did you just say? Don't you ever say that again? And you'd be so green. You'd be like answering the person in your earpiece live on air because you didn't really get that no one was hearing that other voice. And so I would go in most nights that I would come off, particularly the tenants, which was my first major, major gig, and just go in and go, right, sit back down with me. Back in the day of tape, rewind the tape, watch it with me, tell me what I'm doing right, tell me what I can improve on. Like as an athlete, that's what you do with a coach. You can follow a direction, but you need someone to tell you that. And what has continually amazed me over the years is, but I do that to anyone. So I try and mentor as many people as I can, one, because I've learned over time, there's enough roles for us all. There's enough work for everyone. So it doesn't matter if it's a male or a female coming through. There's enough work out there. But also, two, to save them having to go through that humiliation, which is so much more amplified these days because of social media. You just want to help people not stuff up on air. And even if they do, try to get them to understand, it's really not the end of the world. Like you'll wake up the next day. Everything will be okay. But you've got to, you learn that over the years, and you learn how to get a thicker skin. But for those people in that moment, it can be such a cruel and, you know, almost career-defining, life-defining moment. And sometimes I think we're so quick to judge these days, that there's actually something, probably more people come up to me and say, they have enjoyed watching me over 29 years because they remember how bad I was, and they've enjoyed watching you improve and get more confident over time, and they feel like they've been part of that. And we just kind of don't have a space for that for people to learn and for people to occasionally stuff up. All our regional networks, which are so, so important to the fiber, what we can teach people coming through, are just becoming smaller and smaller and almost non-existent. And so that's another avenue where they're not given to learn. So I think, I personally think that's a little sad with it, but yes, that's a long answer to say, live TV, out of everything I do, it is by far and away my favourite thing that I do for all those reasons and more.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's, I mean, it's a whole other topic in itself with everything that you're touching on there. But I mean, it's kind of the interesting landscape of the media right now, isn't it? That this does seem to be lesser and lesser opportunity, say for traditional television, you're seeing sort of these local markets, even radio is closing, you know, and you talk about reality TV, it's kind of, you know, a lot of traditional roles have been lost now to the five minutes of fame reality TV stars. But on the flip side of that, you're on a podcast right now. This is a new medium, YouTube, you know, online sort of channels where people can cut their teeth with that. I mean, it's probably a very in-depth question that we could probably really delve into. But I mean, do you feel that had your media critic started today, that maybe it was something you could go on to sort of the success that you have gone on? Or is it just completely possible to say that?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I would have been absolutely destroyed. I don't think I would have had the career that I've had because you would not be allowed to make as many mistakes. And I've got nothing against those reality stars that turn that, you know, 15 minutes of fame into a career because they still have to work hard and they have to get their foot in the door somehow. They might still be there in 29 years unless they're any good at what they're doing. So I don't have even a problem with any of that. I think my issue is, you know, when I started out, we would have work experience kids along all the time, to jobs, to events, to things like an Olympics coverage. And they could just sit back and watch and learn because not everyone wants to be on camera. They might at the start, but then some of them work out they want to be in production and some of them want to be statisticians and some of them want to be the research and some of them want to be maybe a cameraman or someone in audio. And so they'll give it a chance to stand back and watch and to absorb and then decide what really caught their attention. These days, for a thousand reasons, but most likely, because it's just easier to say a blanket note, they're not allowed out. They're not allowed to. Like I get asked all the time, whether it be athletes or young kids who are studying, like, how do I get that foot in the drawer? And I feel like what we're kind of missing now is, what would be great is to give them a foot in the door, give them a lot of them a foot in the door, because there's going to be a point where, you know, I'm going to be a crusty old demon and I'm just going to roll onto my balcony at the farm and then I'll never come back to the big smoke. And we should have that next lot of talent that are ready to go, just to jump into that, who have gone through all the good and bad and seen it up close so that they have manageable expectations about what it is.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, just saying, Jo, when that day comes for you on the farm, you've got my contact details now. So just maybe don't listen to some of the segments we've had on during the Olympics about Channel 7, just ignore those.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Oh, yes, then you're a beer where it's always easy to criticise, isn't it?
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly, exactly.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: The fact of the matter, which is hilarious, I say to people, if you actually look, which we do, you look at a schedule of all the sports and you look at all the things and we have breakdowns of what sports will be watched and how many eyeballs will be on it. At the end of the day, as much as you would love to have a split screen that had, let's say, 28 sports, and you could have all 28 of them on your camera and people could pick and choose, we're not there yet. This time around, where you could at least stream sport, we're getting a step closer to it. Each time, it gets better. But at the end of the day, you've got to pick one thing. You've got to update five other things, but you've got to be able to point them, which we can do now, which you couldn't even do years ago. So part of doing Olympics is you just learn, you just cop so much.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's a sport in itself, isn't it? Let's criticise the broadcaster.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: But it's like, it's everything, but it's just like, honestly, if you were sitting here and you had to make a call, I'd love to hear what you would do differently. When you have all the information and all the knowledge, what would you do differently?
BEN WATERWORTH: It's fun because we would sort of, during our daily coverage, we have the, because we're sort of a co-production with a Canadian co-host, so we kind of, we call it the CBC slash Channel 7 Fails, but we realise it's not really the fails, it's more of the fun parts, because I think what we found fun is that it's not really the fails, it's just we would write down quotes from the commentators and the hosts, that we found funny, and it wasn't that we were taking the piss, it was more of like, this is actually hilarious or taken out of context, like it's quite a fun moment. And I mean, one of my favourite moments of the entire games is Basil to me, and he's just an absolute god. Like he's whole, it's all going gobbledygook for Zach Stubblycook, things like that, like just sell it for me, that it just kind of goes there. And don't even get me started on Bruce. I've got a whole section to talk about Bruce, but it's just such a fascinating thing. And we would often talk about, because I guess in the last decade in Australia, we've sort of been lucky or unlucky, depending on how you look at it, to see all three commercial networks broadcast at least one Olympics. And every broadcast to me has their pros and cons, and there's going to be things you're going to criticise, and there's going to be things you're going to praise. And as you said, though, it's all well and good for someone like me to sit here and go, well, this is crap, show this, show that. But until you're in that position, it's kind of, it's obviously easy for me to say, but not easy for me to understand how difficult it actually is.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Yeah, and I think if the world was perfect, like I looked at that big screen that we had behind us for the Olympics, and that we'll have for the Paralympics, and the first day we walked in, they just had all these boxes, and it had just vision in every single box, and it wrapped around the whole studio. And in my head, I was like, see, that's what I want in my lounge room. I actually don't want to have to choose between swimming and 10 other sports that are on at that point. I'd love to actually watch them all. And that was actually funny. The amount of people would say to me, oh, my God, I literally was watching something on 7. I had 7.8 on another screen. I had my 7-plus thing going, and I was just flicking between the sports, and the kids were going, no, I want to watch this. And I thought, but even in four years time, that's the difference. I can remember going to the Beijing Olympics, and that was the first time that in your media accommodation, you were given more than one channel. So you had actually, I think they had 41 channels. And some of them would just be a camera that was on the high jump bar. That's all you'd see is a close up of the bar. And so what would happen is when you see athletics live, like your mind gets blown when you go to an athletics finals night, because you're watching one event here, they've got athletes who are running around with their flags, who just won an event there. You've got the pole vault about to start. You've got a shot putter about to do something. And so your head's swiveling the whole time that you're in a stadium. And that's exactly what's happening for the people who are trying to work out to the second and it doesn't always stick to the second. And that's actually what surprised me with Tokyo. Tokyo was so far out from the official timings of what we were given, that it was just like you were just gambling sometimes as to where you were getting. But I can remember sitting in my hotel room and just sitting up way too late than I should, just watching random things like the high jump bar. And what would happen is you'd watch someone jump, but every now and then you'd hear a cheer from somewhere else in the stadium. And you knew it wasn't the high jump because you're watching the bar. And then you're just madly flicking through all the other channels to find the moment that the crowd was cheering about, which is pretty much what it's like putting the Olympics coverage together. And we joke with the athletes. There's so many athletes that go, ah, but we wouldn't even get a start. We got some of the sailors in Tokyo. But the fact of the matter is the host broadcasters decided they weren't going to cover sailing this time. They were only going to do a five-minute packing cheat day. And then we had those moments like we had Matt Wern, we had the 470 crew who obviously won well before they'd done it. And to try and bring families in, we've got a camera on the family. And the families were like, are you joking? We've known two days ago that he won. So the reactions were going to be underwhelming. And you're kind of trying to do that. It's all part of it. You're not even going to get it probably 100% right to keep everyone happy. I remember getting an email through this and the guy was blowing up because we'd shown Logan Martin winning in the BMX freestyle. And that was such an amazing day. And he was amazing. And I thought his backstory was amazing, having committed to building the course in his house and all the rest of it. And on our coverage, we actually had only gone to it live. So we didn't see how many times it got replayed afterwards. And then, of course, the news runs separately to the production, then the sunrise runs separately. So for a viewer who's sitting at home watching all day, every day, I can get that they get frustrated. And this email came through about how repetitive it was, repetitive this and repetitive that, and repetitive that. And he was like, and I can't even find them, you know, men's 100-metre final. And that's great theatre. And so I just said, oh, hey, mate, you know, it's like 3 a.m. I've just come into work. I've just logged on to 7 Plus. I've gone down here, go down here, find this here. There's the men's 100-metre final. And I agree, it's great drama and all the rest of it. But when there's an Australian, like, we actually kind of get caned if you don't show an Australian, particularly if they're winning a gold medal. But anyhow, here's what you're after. And then he came back again, and he's like, it's so repetitive, so repetitive, so repetitive. And I just said to him, is it as repetitive as these emails?
BEN WATERWORTH: I like it.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: But it's just like, seriously, like, look at what we're saying and what we're doing, and look what you're saying and what you're doing. We're both doing exactly the same thing, and we're not even in charge of what sunrise and what news are doing.
BEN WATERWORTH: The thing that's fascinating too is that just, again, you're talking about sort of how far we've come. I mean, we've talked a lot during sort of the games about, yeah, how far we've come as a nation in terms of what we can see. I remember back during Athens when it was a big deal at SBS, I think, picked up some of the sort of the side sports. You could be at midnight watching the handball and volleyball, things that we would never see in Australia. Then Beijing, I remember that was the first game that I remember being able to watch things on my phone. I remember being out for dinner and, you know, grainy little coverage on my small little Nokia, whatever it was at the time. Wow, I can watch us win a gold medal in rowing. And then I know Nine had it in London, but I think that was when they shared it with Foxtel, so you could have the app. Then obviously you had the app on Channel 7 in Rio and then developed that. They did, I remember that, because I paid because it was like...
JOHANNA GRIGGS: And all the funeral and that, it was like, come on, you can't do that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which now, I mean, it just, you know, begs the question, what's next? You know, if like... By the time we get to Brisbane, like what are we going to be up to?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: How exciting could that possibly be? To me, that is actually great. Maybe people will have... I mean, I still find something to whinge about, but they might actually have their dream coverage of what they can go to. But we're about to go in Sunday. We start rehearsing for the Paralympics, right? And it's been amazing. We've been organising all these Zoom chats with the team leaders and Paralympians and people of significance in the Paralympic movement. And you think about where they started in 64. But all the current people that we have... So we've got 50% able bodies and 50% Paralympians hosting and reporting on the coverage, which we're really proud of because the Rio Paralympics that I worked on is hands down my favourite thing out of anything I've ever done over all the years with all the amazing things I've been exposed to. And to hear the Paralympians that we've got reporting for us and commentating, like Priya Cooper, one of our greatest Paralympic swimmers, Annie Williams hosting you, Paralympic gold medallists, Katrina Webb, who won many Paralympic gold medals in athletics. They can all talk about a time not that long ago where they were only allowed to compete during the ad breaks, where they would be ready for their biggest moment of their life, knowing what it meant to them, and they would be on the blocks and they'd watch the cameraman either flicking through his text messages or packing up the tracks next to the pool or packing up the tracks next to the athletics or them saying, can you hurry up because we're coming back from an ad break now. They're going to get 14 hours of live sport every day, as well as up to 16 sports streamed. And you just kind of go, when you hear, like I was talking to Katrina Webb the other day, and she's saying how important it is to see athletes with a disability, that it's an obvious disability, like you might have with Kurt or Anni who's missing one of the lower limb of her left arm, or she said like that's so important for young kids with a disability. And when you think, you know, there's 15 to 20% of every Australian will have a disability of some sort. But for her, it was cerebral palsy. She didn't even know she had cerebral palsy until she was on a netball scholarship at the Institute of Sports. She knew that something wasn't quite right with the body. She couldn't explain a lot what was happening with her body. But she was actually finally discovered she had cerebral palsy, and she learnt how to understand what that meant, how it would impact her life then and all through the future. But she's got a disability that most people looking at her wouldn't be able to visually see. And that comes with another layout. So you have people with an obvious disability who just deal with judgement and really insensitive comments and quite often really crazy bureaucracy making decisions that make their life incredibly difficult. But then you have the people with an invisible disability, and you hear them talk about what it means for them to see somebody who's representing them on the camera and somebody who they can see and relate to when you think there's going to be a child born with cerebral palsy every 15 hours in Australia. So as you hear her talk about it, she started to break down and cry. And in my head, I was like, OK, so I just need to be clear on this, Katrina. When we come to you for a swimming preview, which we will at some point, let's not talk about the swimming. We'll get to the swimming. But let's talk about this, because that's what people need to hear. And that's where a broadcast, whether people want to criticise it or like it or hate it or whatever, it's where it's, again, bigger than the sport and what it can mean to a family in that instant where their life changes or whether it's an athlete who's had a terror or any person in Australia has had a terrible accident. And they actually are seeing people who've been there, who've had those dark times, who have had to change all of their life dreams and plans and their day-to-day activities, and yet they've still found a way to shine a light on it and to have hope and a future and opportunities through sport. So to me, it's like everything that... Yeah, we opened up the Olympics, ironically, telling the story of Kaisa Kakibara, which is an amazing story to tell and say a story and all the drama that ensued with it. The BMX was unbelievable in Tokyo, but there was a part of me that was going, that's every Paralympian story. That's actually sometimes a third of a Paralympian story. It's like you've got Sam McIntosh, you broke his back, learned how to live in a chair. Years later, when he was quite comfortable with what he was doing, was at a party with mates, slipped in his chair, chair fell back, broke his back a second time. Imagine going through that again and actually ending up with an impairment that was even more severe than the first time around. And as I say, every athlete on that team has that. So I think as much as it's so easy to criticise everything, thank God we're going in the right direction with the way that we can go with it. Because at the end of the day, anyone who loves sport, anyone who's working on a broadcast, whether they be a commentator or a host or behind the scenes, they just love storytelling. And that is still the most powerful thing that you can get out of sport, whether it's a good story, a bad story, a story of redemption, it all comes back to the storytelling. And that's why I love sport so much.
BEN WATERWORTH: On sort of the page of, I guess, pioneers and people to sort of look up to and sort of groundbreaking moments, one thing going back to sort of going memories in terms of, you know, me remembering you from TV, but Salt Lake City, 2002, you were the first woman to host, to be the sole host of an Olympics. I don't know if that's just Australia or around the world, whether or not kind of it's that distinction. But I mean, if I have to think about an Olympics, it really sold me on an Olympics, particularly in winter, it was Salt Lake. I was just absolutely glued. I mean, what was that experience like? I mean, how did you kind of take that history that you were making, that you were the first female kind of sole anchor of an Olympic Games coverage?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I was proud of it then, and I've done it for five of my seven Olympics and for the Paralympics that I did in Rio. Having said that, I'm more wrapped to be co-hosting the Paralympics with Kurt Fearnley this time around than you could possibly imagine, because I think particularly with the Paralympics, we should be having Paralympians there talking about their movement and their thing. It was an incredible honour. It's something I'm really, really proud of. And we changed the way winter Olympics were done in this country up until that point, because we realised it was going to be a tough sell anywhere in Australia, which February in Australia, in pretty much most places, is a stinking hot, almost unbearable suffocating heat. And so we decided everything had always been done in studios and everything had always been done like we'd always seen broadcasts done. And so our boss has said, we want you to do it, but we don't want it to be a normal broadcast. We want to just, we don't care if we, you know, you have to get up at 2am, we're going to find the most beautiful locations that we can so that even if someone's not remotely interested in the stories, we know we can tell them the stories once they're hooked, but we need to show them a beautiful vista. We need to show them something where they can escape from that, you know, mind numbingly horrible heat or humidity, depending on where you are in Australia. So that's what we did. And then we just made it about the storytelling. And we knew we had to make it about more than just the Australian storytelling, because we had so few Australian athletes back in Salt Lake, compared to even the sports that are represented now and the athletes that are there now. And they've come along in leaps and bounds as well. But we knew we had to actually very succinctly tell a story that would hook people into some of the biggest names in Winter Olympics worldwide. And it's actually one of the really great things with the Winters is you get a lot more of an opportunity to do that. You also have athletes that have not had anywhere near as much exposure as a lot of their summer games counterparts have. And it's probably a little bit why I love the Paras as well, because, you know, they're all just everyday people who are working. I mean, the Winters got off and they were working two and three jobs to follow their passion. And they were so grateful that anyone would shine a light on them, that they just, you know, like you'd say, hey, look, we're going to be another 45 minutes to get off the mountain. They'd be like, you know, why don't we go down the bottom of the hill for you? Like you just wouldn't get that with the summer games in the past. So it was just a joy to work on, as was Torino. I mean, it felt like it had its challenges because it was obviously post September 11, and security was just outrageous. And you just had to allow about an extra two or three hours to get everywhere. Which is funny, because that was less than what you needed for Rio for public transport. But, you know, like it was just it felt like probably like it did for a lot of us friends. It just felt like a different world. You know, it was it was magic. And so, yeah, it holds a special place. But also for that history, I think a lot of people forget how long I've been around, or how the variety of things that I've done, or that you've hosted the Australia Open 17 times, or that you've done things like people because, you know, the stuff that they see on a week to week basis in a lot of people's minds takes a piece of it. It's only the sports fans like yourself that actually even remember that. So it's always it's always nice when it gets acknowledged. I'm always really proud.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I like to refer to the Winter Olympics as the real Olympics, because I'm a massive winter fan. And the greatest thing about Tokyo being delayed as a year is that we've got, what, six months to Beijing or less than that now. But I mean, the thing about Salt Lake, though, like it's just I mean, any Australian Olympic fan will remember just the history we had with both, you know, Stephen and Alyssa obviously getting getting the golds and the circumstances. I mean, to show my weird fanboy-ness of it, Jo, when I went to Salt Lake City, I went to a Utah jazz game. I didn't give two shits that I was there for a Utah jazz game. I was in the arena that Stephen Bradbury won a frickin gold medal. I'm there like fanboy. Where's the banner on the roof? Australian Olympic history, Craig. I wasn't there. I was offended. I love that.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: But you know, it's so funny because people always talk about the Bradbury moment, Bradbury moment, and you're just going, he was still there. He was there for every race.
BEN WATERWORTH: Amazing story.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Again, such rare air and such an amazing thing that he could do. And he's so amazingly good natured about where it kind of has landed and vernacular and even people's minds as to, you know, sometimes they're a bit dismissive with what he did. But it's like, mate, that is so extraordinary what he did. And it was so exciting at the time. And he was such a great athlete. And I'm glad it actually hasn't been the only thing that's defined him in his life.
BEN WATERWORTH: But he's one of the best autobiographies I've ever read. His story. The thing that people forget about Stephen, of course, too, is he was a member of that relay team that won a bronze back in Lillehammer, created history for winning our first ever medal and world champion. He's like best in the world for most of the 90s. Because everyone fell over, right? And then Survivor fans remembering me as being pretty rubbish on Australian Survivor, but that's the whole story. Yeah, and that's what, like, I just have so many memories of those Olympics. We had the honour of having Jameis Soleil on the show, and that was one of my biggest memories of kind of the whole Soleil-Peltier controversy in that. And then, obviously, Apollo Ono was gunning for about five gold in those Olympics, and Bradbury prevented him from getting one. Alyssa kind of, you know, getting the gold in the aerials after so many new misses from people like Jackie Cooper and Kirsty Marshall. I mean, it was just, it was an incredible time.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: But also the legacy that she then sort of kicked off with that was quite extraordinary as well. And then you hear, like, again, they're probably actually a little bit like the Paralympians. You hear their stories of what they've overcome injury-wise and been brave enough to get back up. Like, I'm the world's biggest scared of cats, scared of heights, scared of, you know, my own shadow. You know, I'm a terrible passenger in a car. I just look at what they do and those split seconds of even having the awareness of where they are when they're flipping and turning and twisting in the air and putting into that, judging the weather, judging whether or not they can actually see the points that they measure themselves on, whether or not that's actually visible to them, whether or not the conditions are going to be great when they land, whether it's going to be icy or whether it's... Or sport, if they're really brilliant, that they make it look so easy, it's not until you put on a pair of skis and try and get a two-inch jump off them and land in something other than amazingly perfect snow that you have an appreciation for.
BEN WATERWORTH: I tried skiing earlier this year. I was off them in two seconds. I'm like, this is bullshit. I'm not doing this. What is this?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: But don't you reckon that's... To me, that's my favourite. Every event that I had to pick out, that was my favourite in the world to watch, it has just been people who make what is actually extraordinarily difficult, look so effortless and so beautiful. And so, like they're made for that moment, just to be, for that moment to be captured, which is why I still do love broadcasting television-wise because you can capture those moments. Like out of all of the Sydney Olympic moments, still one of my favourite images is Cathy coming around in the semi-final around the bends in the rain.
BEN WATERWORTH: And I said pouring with rain, wasn't I? I remember that, yeah.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Pouring with rain, right? And you have all the emotion of the final and you have, like for me, the best part of the final was her actually slumping to the track when the realisation hit of what she'd done. And yeah, all that things, it's just like, they're like little moments that is like a kaleidoscope of things that gets to see into your brain. And it's why people can refer to them 20 years after the fact, because they stay with you, but the other things that stay with you like, you know, he's now become a good mate with Scotty McGrorey and Brett Aiken out of the Sydney Olympics. Let's say with me, because it was one of the hardest interviews that I ever had to do, talking to both of them about something that was so deeply personal, that was made so public, and what they had to overcome to be able to compartmentalise to do, and then having become a parent and realise how extraordinarily strong they both had to be, and yet getting to know them, realising actually that they really weren't that strong. They were struggling so enormously, and yet we still got to ride that whole wave of what they were going through. It's what makes it magic. It's what makes those stories just, yeah, they stay with you. They stay in your heart. They stay in your mind.
BEN WATERWORTH: I've got to ask you just quickly, while I'm on the topic of magic and the Winter Olympics. Taryn, Dale Begg-Smith, utter legend, did you get the chance to interview him? And can you help us? Where is he? Where is Dale Begg-Smith? I don't think anyone knows where he is. He's gone back to his private island somewhere.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I think he's counting his money. Yes. I mean, he was, I will say this. Did we get to interview him? Yes, I got to interview him. Was it a great interview? Absolutely not.
BEN WATERWORTH: I remember during the Nine coverage in Vancouver, Eddie Maguire, so hard trying to get stuff out of him. And it was like, you know, blood from a stone.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Absolutely from a stone. But the only thing that I found quite endearing with him was behind the scenes, you won't hear an athlete say a bad word about him.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh no.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: So what he did behind the scenes and what he's done for development, even post his personal career is quite extraordinary in Australia. So he's considered by the athletes as one of the most generous people, not only in finances, in the sports that they're generally having to self-fund, but also with his knowledge and his time and his guidance and his mentorship. So as much as he's definitely up there with one of the worst interviews that I've had to go give, it's like you actually cannot believe that, like it takes a skill to not say anything more than one word answers, which technically is them qualifying what they need to do for them to be as part of a team and all of the guidelines, but actually not give anything away. Like you almost have an admiration that they can do that. But I always, I was always a little bit fond of him just because there wasn't an athlete that said anything negative about him. And I just thought, you have your reasons. And we all know how he initially had started his fortune and it was a bit dubious. And I get why he probably didn't want to answer it because it actually would have probably taken the limelight off the whole team. So I even had admiration for the fact that he so tightly kept a lid on that because I feel like he did that from what I can gather from all the athletes. I feel like he did that, not for any extra benefit for himself because he's already ridiculously successful, but he actually did that to protect the team. So I actually have respect for his integrity.
BEN WATERWORTH: I remember when Brit Cox was on the show.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Did you just love her? She's like literally the most amazing human being on the planet.
BEN WATERWORTH: Just incredible. And yeah, just her admiration of talking him up. And the great thing is too, is I love it when you kind of, you do the trivia question, like who is Australia's most successful winter Olympian? Who are the two that are our most successful winter Olympians? People might get Tora Brighton like a third guess. They always go for Brad Brie or they go for Lydia or things like that. But then when you go, okay, well, I've got Tora. Great, fantastic. Who's the male athlete? No one ever gets it. I'm like, how do you not know this?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: But that also shows you how the new cycle works. You know, like you actually have to have the athletes to give you something for them to remain in the heart, whether or not it's something that they necessarily want to give in that moment. That's why those raw moments like you think Sally Pearson, not even necessarily a gold, but when she just got a silver, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: And that was one of my most favourite interviews I've ever seen in my life.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Hilarious. Just hilarious. And funny because you just go, for all the sports these days where the athletes are so media trained, it was just so raw and emotive. And she had seriously shocked herself, and she was bloody pumped with herself. And it was just joyous to watch, right? So, you know, in those moments, if you talk to Sal now, she's like, oh my God, what was I think? Yes, it was great. But now I look back and I'm like, could I have not toned it down? But thank God she did it because it actually gave her a place in, if you love sport, into that sporting folklore forever. And by the time she won the gold, she was so much more polished and so much more practiced at the responses. You never saw that rawness to the same level.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, you think about that too with someone like Jane Saville, who famously had the whole, I want a gun to shoot myself moment. And then you talk about that emotion four years later, getting a bronze. And we talk so much up on this show how we love it when we see an athlete showing emotion for, you know, not only a bronze, maybe a fifth place, a personal best, things like that. And just Athens, I think I bawled my eyes out seeing Jane cry on that podium for a bronze medal. It was amazing.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: But again, she's one of the athletes that I absolutely love because obviously we revisited Sydney last year, the Sydney 2000 Olympics. And she's an athlete who that moment could have absolutely crawled alive and it has not defined her in any way, shape or form. And she, you know, she talks about how she saw the official that gave her the final red card as she was heading into the tunnels. And she basically, you know, saw them at breakfast the next day and they had a laugh about it. And she's like, well, obviously you're not my favourite person, but I get it. Because she, again, she understood the rules of the sport that you grow up with. And I have, I love and have so much admiration for her that she's realised there's the rest of the life to go and live and, and don't get so hung up on that moment and let it define you. She really hasn't let that define her. But you know, if you look even more recently, you know, and I went on air and I said, I turned up at three o'clock in the morning, I said, Oh my God, I've watched this Andrew K is going to be five times that he did on Chinua and he I've cried five times that we need to play it. They went, Oh no, but the next show has bags. And I'm like, yeah. And I looked at Luke Darcy, who I was co-hosting with, and I was like, let's just talk about it anyway, because if we talk about it, they're probably going to have to show it. So we just talked about it because he came into work and I'm like, Luke, watch this. And Luke's like, I didn't even normally cry, but I want to cry. And then he said it to his wife and his wife just said, I'm bawling. And so we were just showing people because, you know, again, I think one of the lines he said is you don't have to win a gold medal to, to actually go on, you know, even if it's the most obvious word in reality and in a sport journey. But it's, you know, to then hear him list the DNA of all the coaches he'd been before and all the players he'd been before and everyone who'd been a part of why it was so important to that current crop. And yeah, it was just the most raw magic five minutes of TV, but he was able to still articulate so beautifully and eloquently what it meant. And it was, you know, I saw a picture a week later of his dad still wearing the Australian shoes that the team members got just up on like a like a little footstool. And he just had it up there and he was still just looking up and smiling at Andrew because Andrew had spoken about, you know, the role his dad had played in basketball in Australia. And when they started out and there were only 200 people registered. And I reckon the saddest part of the Tokyo Olympics. And I know he had all these reasons and all the rest of it for. But I think he will. I don't know if you'll ever reflect enough, but I hope you reflect one day. But I reckon if Ben Simmons had just been part of it and allowed himself to to embrace it in the way that so many of our other fantastic stars that play in the NBA and have had so much success in the NBA, I think I think it actually would have helped him probably not at his career, but I reckon more it would have helped him as as a person just to to have something that means more than what is self-combusting in your mind in that time. I think it would have given him great perspectives. So that's my one. My one regret is actually not a regret for me. It's a regret for him that he that he actually made that decision not to be part of it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Now we talked a bit about Ben during our cover, sort of wondering how things would have gone differently. But, you know, great story. It's that was that was the that and the Jess Fox gold. I think at the end of the day were the ones that when we reflected on the moments, it was like, what were your favourite? And like, you know, obviously so many to choose from such a great game for Australia. But it was like, yeah, just Fox cracking that gold. I don't think I've been that nervous in an Olympic event in a long time. And then you're seeing the boom is finally getting a getting a medal was great.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Well, just because, you know, for Jess, like I, I watched I watched the K1 and I sobbed for 20 minutes in my hotel room because just knowing how knowing her very well, knowing how how graciously she answered the same questions over and over and over. And then I was actually a little bit furious because, you know, one of our journalists asked, you know, and can you get the gold at the end of the first interview? And I thought, oh, far out. Come on. Like, aren't we better than that? Like, you know, in the same way I hate metal tallies and made that very well known yet again during this coverage, I didn't get in trouble this time, which is unlike every other games. It was just that thing of going, you know, for her to get the C1 gold, it means that there was never any doubts she was the best paddler, male or female. It was already been decided by people in that world and people outside of that world, and she'd won 30 world cups and 10 world championships. And, you know, she was such an amazing athlete. She already had, you know, three Olympic medals by that point going into it. But to win that gold, I saw because she never has to be asked that question. She never has to be defined by that question. She never has to be asked, do you regret not getting the gold? You know, it's like you could see that relief, that relief when she crossed the line, when she realised it, and then she was hugging her mum and her sister. And it was just, it was just, for me it was more like, oh my God, thank God, this is not going to haunt you and be over you for the rest of your life. Because we've all been to sportsman's nights and sportswomen's nights where you watch people who maybe have a moment where they haven't quite lived up to what the public's expectation is, without the public really knowing the full story of what they may have been through. And they answer politely that same question over and over and over again. And I just think they're so gracious. They're so generous. I'm not sure I would be that generous in that moment. Like, you just, like, especially with some of the people who are asking you, you must look at them and go, really? Tell me how many times you've been in a bloody kayak or canoe and how many times you've done anything like that. And yet your first question to me is, can you win? Like, can you put that demon to Ben? They are, they endlessly amaze me how awesome they are and how generous they are with not only what their talent, but also their generosity of spirit with what they have to put up with.
BEN WATERWORTH: We wrap up all our interviews with a series of fun questions. I'm really looking forward to actually, because I think you're our first non-athlete to be able to answer them. So we'll get to them. Well, you are an athlete, sorry, as in, as in, you know, I'm just offending you now. I'm not an athlete, mate.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I would drown in a bathtub these days.
BEN WATERWORTH: Commonwealth Games bronze medallist, Ben. Come on now. Check yourself.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I'll tell you one story, Ben. My boys were in year seven and year six. They came home from school one day and they were like, hey, mum, could I ask you a question? Were you a swimmer or a swimmer swimmer? And I said, what's a swimmer swimmer? And Jess goes, I don't know. And I said, how about I tell you what I did? And then you tell me what you think. And so I ran through a few things and he went, oh, that's embarrassing. I said, why? He goes, oh, because I was talking about you as a, he said, I think that makes you a swimmer swimmer. But when I heard them talking about you, I said they had the wrong person because I've never actually seen you hop in a pool. And I thought that was a very healthy measure that my kids weren't, that I wasn't one living in some past, you know, hey, I once won a couple of games or world championship medal and numerous world cups and that they never actually realised I was a swimmer. So I thought that was actually a very healthy thing. So I'm allowed to be called a non athlete.
BEN WATERWORTH: Right. I won't check myself. But just a couple of quick ones before we get to those. Now, you talk about questions that are asked a lot. I'm sure this is one that's asked a lot to you. You've been to seven Olympics and been part of seven Olympic coverage, coverages. You've mentioned the Rio Paralympics as maybe your favourite experience. But besides that, what has been your favourite Olympics that you were a part of?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: To be honest, I enjoyed Tokyo as much as I did the Sydney Olympics, if we're talking purely Olympics. Paralympics is next level. Olympics, I have always loved and I've always been like you, a bit of an Olympophile, and grew up watching it and loved it. Sydney Olympics was amazing because I got to co-host with Andrew Jaddo the morning show. We did it a week out and then the two weeks over. And at the time we were kind of going, oh, you know, you got Roy and HG and they're going to get all these athletes and they were such rock stars of the game. We ended up loving our shift because you either had the athletes still coming in, either quite inebriated, or they'd had time to reflect. And so you ended up getting a very different interview from the athletes the morning after. So it was just the best fun. And we were in an amazing location, which was with thanks to Seven and Saksom executive, and they had some house down in the water. They had the opera house on the Harbour Bridge in the background. So we just took over his empty house. And it was, you know, Andrew was a great co-host. It was outstanding. Obviously, the winters are special because it was so different and magical. Athens was different because we did it overnight. We were in the wrong time zone. So we'd finish off air every single night, and it would actually be morning. So you'd just come out in broad daylight, and you'd just be wired to the Hilton going, oh, now I need to go to sleep in broad daylight. Rio was an absolute debacle of an Olympics to be at. I have so much admiration for how the athletes handled all the extra challenges that were many and varied. And then you get to Tokyo, and none of us were sure how it would feel because originally we were all going to go to Tokyo, and we thought it was going to be amazing. And yet even Bruce came to me at one point, and he said, crazy. He said, I just can't believe it. He said, I didn't know how I'd feel not being there, but I actually think I like this. This is one of my favourites. And I said, Bruce, I'll put it up there with Sydney. And he said, me too. We got to this moment going, wow. And part of that, like Luke Darsley, the co-host, was just so awesome. And we organised to have co-hosts because when we were preparing for the Olympics, we didn't actually imagine the Olympics. We were going to go ahead. We were preparing for potentially 16 days of highlights and 16 days of tape pieces. We prepared for 32 days of content. But we were expecting that entire swathes of sports and potentially countries were going to go out because of COVID. So the fact that they pulled off those games, you always knew it was going to be something special, and it far exceeded that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Just a quick follow up on that then.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Sorry, that wasn't a quick answer, was it?
BEN WATERWORTH: Quick answers on this show. I don't know what they are. I just say that to be polite, let's be honest. But does it spur you on with the memories of Sydney? Now that Brisbane obviously have 2032. I mean, we've got the chance of a lifetime in Australia to have two games in our lifetime, which is incredible. Memories of Sydney spur you on to Brisbane, I can imagine.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Look, I'm probably going to be 480 years old come Brisbane. I'm not sure that I will still be... I mean, if I had me, I'll be there with the bells on, or I might be in a different capacity. But I think the thing that I loved about the Brisbane announcement was if you go back through all the profiles of all the Olympians or you go back through all the profiles of the Paralympians and you see how many of the current crop of athletes were inspired by previous Olympic Games, I couldn't help just having so many moments just reflecting how many things that we were watching in Tokyo and how many things we will watch over the next few weeks with the Paralympic Games that will actually inspire athletes, that will inspire even if it's a young child who's watching who might be, say, 11 by the time 2032 comes around. But they're going to fall in love with the Olympics and the Paralympics. They're going to fall in love with not the IOC or the IPC. They're going to fall in love with the athletes. And there's sports that don't get the attention and the paid space in newspapers and the Times, unless it's on a podcast with someone like you, who obviously I adore, but they don't get the exposure. And so that's why those games are so special and why they are so important, because they will inspire generations of kids with able-bodied or with disabilities to get active. And ultimately, if you look at trends around the world, the more that we can do that, the more that we can keep kids active, it's going to be better for their physical health, it's going to be better for their mental health. And then we will have great stories. Hopefully, it will be you in the chair for 2032. And you can be sitting there.
BEN WATERWORTH: You've got some connections, Johanna.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Promise me that you will bring it back to those moments where they watched those athletes and they were actively inspired by them and it encouraged them to be active and to dare to dream because that's ultimately why we get sucked into these things.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, I mean, in all seriousness on that, it is a dream of mine to work on an Olympics. I mean, I've had the pleasure of working during the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in the media, but it's sort of...
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Which was awesome.
BEN WATERWORTH: Absolutely. I have a question about that in just a second. But it's interesting when it comes to, yeah, I remember the moments, the sporting moments, but a lot of what I remember having always wanted to do this as a career is the commentary behind it. It's sort of those moments. You were talking before about Kathy. We all remember Bruce's call. And one, Basil, God, don't get me started on my love for Basil. One thing that I would love to talk to him about is not only his amazing career, but he called Bradbury. He was the one who was calling the, Bradbury's come through and wins the goal. Just iconic. We had that in our introduction for our winter. Don't sue us. I shouldn't have said that. But it's moments like that that I remember. The calling behind it. So the sports are inspiring the athletes, and you guys are inspiring people like myself who want to be where you are.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: So can I tell you the best thing which I always say to people? Because I know obviously Bruce and I know Basil really well. I know all the commentators really well. So the amount of work that they put in, but I always remember they tell, lots of them tell stories of the best, it was Dennis Comenny who originally told me this, the best ad libs of the pre-prepared ones. And when I do public speaking, I always talk about Bruce and Cathy's race. And they don't realise that Bruce called that race 500 times with Cathy pulling a hammy at the start, with Cathy faltering, leading the whole way and faltering with 20 metres to go, every possible scenario of what could have played out. So then when he's actually calling it live, it's instinctive, but he's just prepared for anything. And badge is the same, even with the Arianne Titmuss, like apart from the Zac one, which made me laugh so hard, but it was all about the time of the coronation. It's the queen, the new crown to be. He's thought through those moments, but you might think through seven of those moments of possible scenarios, but you might only get to use one of them, or you might not ever get to use them. But the preparation and the planning in the Lead Up Tour is something that I just have so much admiration for those great callers. And I put that up there. I think, I mean, I found Bruce during Tokyo was probably the most, like he was the most nervous to work with in the Lead Up Tour, but he was the most relaxed in commentary. Like hearing him and Colbert in Tamsin, there were so many moments where Darsen and I were just pissing ourselves laughing in the studio, where you just heard a side to Bruce that you know personally, but you don't always hear publicly, but he just felt so comfortable that he was just the Bruce that we know and love and sharing it with the public. And it was, you know, that they are brilliant for a reason. And, you know, the Darren Boyds that are going to be calling, the Brenton Speeds, everyone who we're going to hear and have heard through the Olympics and the Paralympics, they're there for a reason. It's a pretty special and unique gift, but it shouldn't be, you know, that there will be some people go, oh, I can't stand it. You just go, mate, just try it before you criticise. Just try it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I was going to say Bruce last. We're on the topic right now. One of my favourite Bruce stories, it was several years back, there was a North Melbourne game here in Hobart, and I sort of somehow ended up at a function, and Wayne Carey was there, and Wayne Carey was at our table, and, you know, we're talking to, you know, people are asking Wayne Carey about, you know, his amazing career, you know, all this sort of stuff. I wanted to talk about Bruce, and this was, he had flown to Hobart, like, the night after Friday Night 40, he had been working with Bruce, and he was just telling the amazing stories about Bruce in the commentary box, how, you know, he's got someone in his ear feeding him a statistic, he's got people handing him sheets of paper, and all this other stuff. Bruce, off the head, Bruce, everything, it's all Bruce. Just, and like, that lived up to every expectation I have of Bruce. If I talk about idols in my life, Jo, the two that stood out for me, and I had the pleasure of interviewing him before he sadly passed away earlier this year, Mary Walker, just idol, absolute idol, absolute just legend in my eyes. And the other is Bruce. I spent many years of my childhood impersonating Bruce. There was one impersonation I think my dad said I could slightly do okay. Don't ask me to do it now. It's been a long time, so it's probably, I don't know how that feels, but he's just, again, going back to my point about people in my position who sort of idolise people in your position, he is just absolutely there. Can you just, again, live me to my expectations that Bruce is just an utter, utter legend?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I can, because Bruce has mentored me from day dot. So the early days when I was really struggling, Bruce would say to me, quicksy, quicksy. The only thing that, you see, they're always going to criticise you for how you look or what you do, but what they can't criticise you for is your knowledge. So your key is going to be research. And he has been somebody who I have been able to go to endlessly in my life and who I love so much, because he's not only brilliant at what he does, he's one of the kindest, most generous. And when I say generous, generous is spirit. So for example, Abbie Gelme was really nervous hosting a first Olympics. Bruce rang up. We keep saying it was his 11th game. It was his 11th summer games. You add all the winters on top of that, and we're going to numbers like Phil Liggett-esque, right? And Bruce, he rang Abbie and he said, Abbie, I'm just a little bit nervous. Like, can you help an old fella out? Just give me a couple of tips, right? Which Abbie knew he was doing because he's just so bloody gorgeous. But having worked with him so closely for so many years, Bruce walks into a room, it might be two years since he's seen someone. He will remember not only every person, but a detail about their lives. A story I always tell is one of our makeup artists who had worked with him for a lot of years on the tennis, and then when Bruce stepped more into the commentary and away from hosting in 2000, you actually hadn't had a lot to do with him for a long time, and during that time, a dad passed away. And I always had had great experiences, as everyone does with Bruce, because Bruce lifts everyone around him. He wants everyone to shine and everyone to be good, and he actually still is like a kid. He just wants to be part of a team, and he gets giddy with excitement, but it's so bloody endearing that you just feel so protective of Bruce. And this makeup artist had passed away, and he was getting an award after his death at something he'd done with the trot. Bruce probably hadn't spoken to this makeup artist for probably eight years, and he left a message on the phone, and she didn't pick up, she didn't even recognise the number, and it was Bruce just saying, listen, I just want you to hear lots of things about people when they pass, and your dad was an interesting character, and there'll be people that say good things and bad things, but he's getting an award today at the trots because this is what he did. And he just reeled off the most extraordinary things that her dad had done in his lifetime that she, the family didn't even know, like they weren't even aware of half of it. They were aware of some of it, but not half of it. And he said, so today, when you stand there, you'd be so proud of your dad and proud of everything that he did, and just know that people like me will be thinking of him, we'll be thinking of him on Saturday. Right, to think in Bruce's world with everything that he's doing and everything that he's remembering, everything that he's meticulously taking his notes on, that he still takes the time to ring somebody who he hasn't really had contact with for eight years to leave a message about not only that her dad has passed, but several weeks on when he's receiving an award to give her context of like that, that sums him up. But another thing just as recently as Tokyo, we did the rehearsal for the dress, the opening ceremony, and Bruce is like, I just don't feel like I'm ready. I just don't, I don't want, is it okay if you, if you and Hamish just, you just take over all the bits, because originally it was just going to be three of us doing Parade of Nations. You take over the bits and then I'll just time in with things. But only if I feel like it, but I don't want the pressure of doing it. And was like, absolutely, Bruce. What Bruce wants about you, bend over backwards and you would kill someone if they tried to stop him. And so he sat in, Parade of Nations starts, and you say the countries and you say, okay, and Bruce, not one note, not one, like his researcher, Joshua, he works very closely with behind the scenes, but Josh is just sitting back, just smiling in all, as we all were. And Bruce just reels off all those stats without a note, without prompting, just remembering every individual, every country, everything they've done, every person they've raised against. Like he's, I called him a national treasure on it. He is a national treasure. There is only one mole for him. And anyone that ever tried to step up, they'd have to step up more than just being a great commentator or having a great memory. They'd actually have to be as generous as Bruce is as a human being. And in my experience in all those years, he's pretty rare to go to that level. There's lots of good people, but he's in the stratosphere. He is unbelievable.
BEN WATERWORTH: 100% agree. Wow. You got me a bit emotional telling that story about the phone call there.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: It makes me cry every time. I have a million Bruce stories like that. He's just such a legend.
BEN WATERWORTH: I have to say, I will never have this opportunity again, Jo, but please pass on my details and we would love to get him on the show. I don't know if he does podcasts. He probably doesn't, but I mean, seriously.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: He's in quarantine in Gore at the moment. I'd give him a bit of time because he was absolutely knackered at the end of the Olympics, as you can expect. But he did actually love it more than he expected this time around. So I will definitely speak to Annie, his wife, because she organises all that. I'll let him know.
BEN WATERWORTH: Please do. It's an open invitation. He can talk to me at 3 in the morning. I will gladly do anything with that. And just quickly, before I get to the final questions, talk about admiration. One part of your career that I absolutely admired the heck out of was 2018 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, you sort of speaking out against it. I was at that closing ceremony, so I kind of understood it. But I mean, I don't really want to dwell on the negative aspect of that. But I mean, when you were on air doing that, how did you feel at that moment? Obviously, you were quite angry, but the backlash and everything that came with that, that must have been an interesting moment of your broadcasting career.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: It was, and I'm glad it came at a point in my career where I've got pretty thick skin. But I still know it was the right thing to do, and I knew it was the right thing to do because as soon as I had done it, I heard from the athletes who were obviously gagged by their contracts, and I heard from every performer who was performing, and all of them were just like, thank God somebody said something. And in all the interviews and news since, the amount of people who have come up and said, maybe we were there, it was one of those things where, we've been to the briefing that you do for 10 minutes, and they'd explain athletes were going to be in the centre of the thing. That's not unusual, that's happened before. That bit was not the surprising bit. The surprising bit was that even though they had time to work out the staging, where the athletes would be, where the track was going to be around the back for the closing ceremony, that the artistic director or whoever it was had decided that it wasn't going to be about the athletes, it was going to be about the show. And even though we kind of knew that that's about kind of planning on the way in as far as it was going to be a stage show more than anything, they had originally planned to show all the athletes. But when they actually were in the moment, they decided the camera angles were too far away. So they made a decision to turn the lights off over the athletes, so you wouldn't see the athletes. And a lot of the lights kind of went off around the top of the stadium as well. And so we were kind of watching it. We watched when they came in, and I always remember Kurt Fernley carrying the flag and waving it madly, and somebody just coming up to him and just grabbing the flag out of his hand and going, okay, take your positions. And I remember looking at his face even when he did that, even though it was from a long way away, just going, what is going on? They weren't given that moment of celebration. And then as it progressed, there were lots of things. There was a bit of a mist of rain. So there were people slipping over on the stages and the artists themselves would just say it was a debacle from their point of view. They knew it was a debacle. And the athletes were just like, well, why are we here? There's no point us being here. And they started to leave. And I started keying on saying, mate, have we got a camera near the exit? The athletes are leaving. And they're going, no, no, no. I'm like, no, the athletes are leaving. We're watching the athletes leaving. This is a joke. This is so embarrassing. When are they going to show shots of the athletes? And so it was like this dialogue that kept going. And then eventually it became very obvious that the athletes were leaving. But so was the stadium. The stadium was empty.
BEN WATERWORTH: It was empty. I remember it vividly.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: It was emptying. And it was one of these weird things where I just said to them, hey, guys, I just keyed on it. If you think I'm going to get up at the end and say how fabulous this is, I'm just not. And they came back and they said, well, actually, I think you're going to have to because we're obviously the Australian broadcasters. And I'm like, yeah, well, I'm just giving you a fair warning. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to call it as it is. We should be celibate. They just put on 11 of the best days of sport. It was actually so awesome, those Commonwealth Games. It's just so disappointing that this is how they're going to end it. Even you think about those games and how they combine para sports and able-bodied sports. It broke such ground on so many levels and ran like clockwork and had so many great stories that came out of it. And then you got to the end of it. And as opposed to being a big exclamation mark with a celebration, it was just, it was embarrassing. And so they were like, oh, God, are you serious? I said, no, I'm deadly serious. And they went, just give us a moment. And then we just kept going, Basil and I, and then eventually they came back and they said, actually, we've cleared it to the top. We're going to position you to camera position. Go your hardest. We also agree it's shit. And it was like, so why did we have to have a conversation about saying that? I found that weird. But so I obviously offloaded, and Basil was being his beautiful, neutral self. And I was just like, no, it was terrible. We say it's terrible. And then I'm angry for the athletes and any other. The stuff that ensued after that was just bizarre, because you knew you're going to do something and then tee off like that, because you're going to get criticism. And it wasn't a criticism of the young kids who were singing their hearts out, or even the performers. I know they were trying their best. It was the decision to exclude the athletes from the closing ceremony that I had the issue with. But of course, that moment gets dissected a million different ways. And then ironically, it was females in the media who had to crack the hardest at you. And they weren't even in the briefings or other things. It was just surreal. But I'm lucky I've been around long enough. I just turned my phone off, sent a couple of smiley thanks back to people. And honestly, it didn't affect my life. I rang my husband the morning after. And he's just hilarious because he never watches literally anything that I do. And I think that's so healthy. It's probably why we are madly in love 16 years after we got married. But I rang him and he said, hey, doll, anything you need to tell me about last night? I kind of teed off about the closing ceremony. And just so you know, it's possibly going to be my last day at work. And he goes, how do you feel about it? He says, did you sleep? And I said, you know what, Toddy, I did. I slept like a log. I know I did the right thing. And he said, well, that's all that counts. He said, we'll get through any of it. And it was just hilarious, because on the night, they obviously had gone all the way to the top, because we went to the post-closing ceremony get together. And it was all the seven people, it was all the people who put on the closing ceremonies. You can imagine it was a pretty awkward room to walk in on. And our head of sports, Sor Ston, did a speech and he said it was actually the thing he was most proud of. And so you had all the seven people, you know, cheering, and then you had all the people who put it on just going, yeah, you bloody upstart, how dare you?
BEN WATERWORTH: That's our life.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: You know, you're so conscious of everyone's feelings in that moment, and you kind of go, I haven't even thought about how that might feel for you. Sorry about that. But Kerry Stokes sort of came up and he's like, I'm so proud that you felt that you would just say that. He goes like, I know that to you, and I've known you a long time, but I'm so proud that you would do it publicly. And then I started getting so many nice things said to me by the bosses that I actually thought 100% I was going to get sacked because they were so nice to me. It kind of felt like, you know, the old, I've got the support of the board. Publicly, we're going to say.
BEN WATERWORTH: You're going to get training when you come to Channel 7.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: He has the support of the board, which means, by the way, you also don't have a job going forward. So I had already kind of come to peace that if that ultimately was it, at least because I had so much support from the athletes and the artists, I was like, yeah, OK, I'm still going to be able to sleep. I'm going to be OK. But in actual fact, it did translate to support from the network as well. So it was just one of those weird things. I had to go on a voiceover booth the next day for like three days straight for House Rules, and I've never been happier to be able to just block out the world. And it's not a bad thing to say to young people starting out when there is a scandal. It too shall pass. It does pass. And there will be some people who occasionally come up and they go, how dare you? And you just say to them, well, hang on, let me give you the context. So it's the same as anything. It's like people are going to make up their minds. You do an opening ceremony. Like I think after the Tokyo thing, I'm the biggest racist in Australia. I'm this. I said stupid things. You know what? As Bruce said, when we walked out, do six hours of talking nonstop, pick out the moments, and I guarantee you, you can all find something that you're going to pick on and go, I sleep very comfortably because I know who I am. And I know what I stand for, and I know what values that I choose to live my life by. And it's not any of the things that people are going to criticise you for. So it takes a long time to get that kind of armor that you need to survive in the industry. And that's why I just figure my role in the next 10, 15 years is to try and just help as many people who are coming through the ranks understand all of that and what it takes and how important it is to have a life away from it. Because I think that's been my biggest success story in life, because I've always had a great life away from TV. So I love what I do. I only work on things I love. I only work with people who I love working with now because I've reached that point in my career. But I also have a great balance away from it. So when it goes pear-shaped and you're horribly wrong, it's not the end of the world.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I'm going to test those waters right now with these final questions. Because there could be some answers in here that might...
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Controversial.
BEN WATERWORTH: Who knows what we're going to find out today, basically. The pretext of these, as I always explain to our guests, is as a co-Canadian Australian production, we obviously feature a lot of Canadian content. And back during Rio and Pyeongchang on the Team Canada website, they had a questionnaire that they would put towards several of their athletes. Kind of a get-to-know-you sort of session. And it's always a bit of fun. And as always, I say sort of a side text. There is homework if you want to take it. There are some drawing elements of this. If you want to do it, you can. If not, it's fine. We've had one athlete come through with that homework, Jo. So, you know, you can add to it if you really want to.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I'm definitely hooked in. Like, this will be something on commercial TV. We'll be like, move back with that questionnaire after this.
BEN WATERWORTH: Don't worry. We're the podcast, which a lot of people say that. We'll listen to that after this. We'll get to it eventually. First question for you. The greatest Olympian of all time is?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: All time. I would say, for me, Cathy Freeman, because it's in my time, and I felt like she healed a nation, she carried a nation. The pressure that she was under was beyond extraordinary. So, Cathy.
BEN WATERWORTH: The first, now, this is the one I talked to you off air about, which, I mean, you, I said, I felt old asking this to one of our guests. I don't know, you know, how, like, the first Olympics you ever remember watching were.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: 84 at school, we had a teacher who was just mad about the Olympics, and the TV screen was moved into our classrooms, and we got to watch the 84 Olympics. And I often say, and I say to Josh Kaye, Bruce's researcher, we should make it part of the curriculum, particularly in lockdown times, we should have had part of the curriculum where we even offer our, you know, stories and stuff for schools, that the kids get interested in sport and they learn how to love the athletes and become excited about them. But I'd love to see the Olympics and Paralympics for those two weeks, part of the curriculum for lots of different things that you could focus on. But for me, it was LA.
BEN WATERWORTH: Good, good answer. I mean, I would say I wasn't...
JOHANNA GRIGGS: You can't remember LA because you're so bloody young. You're right there.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was minus three. But we'll sort of add that there. Now, this is a homework element. If you want to draw a picture of yourself, Jo, you're welcome to. Feel free to send it in. We'll publish it on our social media. What is your favourite ice cream flavour?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Anything with chocolate, chocolate chunks, Homer Hudson, chocolate rock, anything that's Ben and Jerry's, anything that is ridiculously decadent that I can add Milo and chocolate sauce to.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, yes, Milo. That's a good one.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Milo is underrated, man. Milo rocks. I make my husband a Milo with a teaspoon of honey from our bees every single morning.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'll tell you what, the one thing I miss most living overseas, well, two things, I miss Dim Sims and Milo. Yeah. They're the, not together.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: You know you can get Milo, just like you could literally walk out your place, go to a store, get Milo. Like it's not hard to get.
BEN WATERWORTH: I know. Now it's, I'm back. It's kind of, yeah, I should sort of stockpile it basically. So yeah, one of the weirdest things I ever experienced in travelling was when I was in Malaysia, they're obsessed with Milo. You can get Milo at McDonald's in Kuala Lumpur.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I remember when the Milo ice creams were big and the Milo baas were big. And I mean, I love, I'm not your average size eight on television. I love all food. And I love, I kind of sometimes say to people, I wish I was allergic to something, I had an intolerance to something because I probably would not be six foot tall and you know, size 14. I would be tiny like you're meant to be on television, but I love all food and I love sweets and I love savoury equally. So I'm a bad person to ask about this stuff.
BEN WATERWORTH: All those days of being free of everything, you know, gluten.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Oh, thank God. That's why I'm allowed to now. I still have to take some of them out of my diet, even all these years on when I'm not as healthy as I should be, but I know what to take out first.
BEN WATERWORTH: If you were a baseball player, what would your walk up music be? I find this interesting because I mean, you didn't sort of have these grand entrances that the swimmers get these days.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Oh God, mine would probably be the ABC news music that they play because that's what I grew up on and that's what I still love. And I am so bad with pop culture or maybe something that, I don't know, that's preempting a death, the final countdown, something like that. Like I just, I would be so uncomfortable. I'd be heading out to humiliate myself. So something dramatic that suggested the end was near.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I think like take the ABC theme and use the Pendulum version when they remixed it, you know, kind of do that.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I'm all there for a remix. It makes me sound way cooler than I am.
BEN WATERWORTH: Or the home and away theme, just to kind of really.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Yeah, no, probably not that. Oh, life keeps getting better all the time. Better homes and gardens.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, exactly. How sick are you are of that theme? I don't want you to bad mouth better homes and gardens, but is it-
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I would never bad mouth better homes and gardens. Better homes and gardens is 90 minutes of positivity every week that we all need.
BEN WATERWORTH: Brilliant, what a show.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: What a show.
BEN WATERWORTH: House rules, how great is house rules?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Not the same thing, but better homes, tell you.
BEN WATERWORTH: We want to keep you job by the end of this interview. In a movie about your life, who would you be played by?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Who is the most, probably Mr. Bean. Someone who's really uncaring.
BEN WATERWORTH: I would watch that. I would weirdly watch that. I would like to see how he would look with the blonde wig.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: That or someone from the office, because I'm just a little bit awkward and uncaring. So Steve Carell in the American version would also do nicely.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now the second homework here, draw a picture of a Canadian animal. It's not an Australian animal, it's a Canadian animal. So this person's drawn a moose. So standard.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: A moose?
BEN WATERWORTH: Canadian animal, really?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Yeah, I'm trying to think what they have on their, their Olympic uniforms that they regularly have. Is an otter Canadian?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, we'll go with, there's otters in Canada. So that, I don't know if that's it.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: There's bears, there's otters.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, Canadian geese that will attack you. So, well, here's another interesting one. You've talked about your snacks. What's your guilty pleasure snacks? Clearly none of them. You own all of them. Yeah, I have all of them.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I don't deny myself anything. I had too many years of doing that. Wow, guilty pleasure. My husband doesn't eat chocolate. I love chocolate. What is my guilty pleasure? Look, it's, I'm such a dork. My guilty pleasure is probably something that would be so far in the realm of better homes, so far away from what you're expecting. It would be spending two hours by myself in my veggie patch. I grow 85% of all our veggies, and I love that time or playing with my bees. It would be something. It's not like a guilty pleasure of what I would eat. It would be a guilty pleasure of the time that I would take to enjoy the things I love.
BEN WATERWORTH: I take it. I like that answer. Growing up, who was your favourite sports team?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Manly Seagulls, which everyone always goes, Oh, I'm a senior dad who got you into rugby league. But our mum was and still is obsessed with rugby league. But we basically were brought up to get a wheelbarrow out the front of the car and get maroon and white flowers and shower all the cars every time that we had a home game on a Saturday or a Sunday. And then mum would walk us down and mum would walk us to Brookie Oval and we would sit on the hill and we'd all watch Manly. So we were absolutely in Georgia. And then like the Collingwood of the NRL, like everyone loves to hate Manly. And a couple of years ago, we bought mum tickets in the grandstand thinking, you know, she goes to every game. She would just love the comfort. I had a friend who was at the game and I said to her, hey, my mum's up there. Have a look at this seat number. And she's like, no, can't see her. I'm like, no, no, she's definitely there. I've got a text from her like 40 minutes ago. She's definitely there. Like just look out for her. She's like, got a text. She's not here. So I rang mum. I'm like, hey, where are you? She's like, I'm sitting in my seat. I love my seat. It's so great. You have such a great view of everything. It's a mate. And I'm like, mum, I know you're not in your seat. She's like, I'm on the hill. I can't hear anyone yell out. Like, I love just sitting here giggling at the banter. I love hearing the naffies go. She goes, I haven't sat in my seats all year. The audience were like, okay, well, we won't buy those seats next year. Like, because she lives for it. You get 800 million takes every single game they play. So as a result, like I would say that was the team I watched the most growing up.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is it a case of if you accidentally don't go for them one time, you get kicked out of home. I was on that as a kid as a Collins Porter. If I dare cheat against him at one moment, I was out of the house no matter what.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Out of the house. I actually won't hear about it. We're like, but Jez Hasler is a current coach. He was a coach for a long time. He went to Canterbury Bulldogs for a number of years. My mum went from loving him to hating him. She was so venomously against him. And then when he came back, like, we always laugh. It's like, say Desi, you can do no wrong. What an amazing, like, she's hilarious, she lives. And as I say, everyone always goes, it must be your dad, but it's like, no, our mum was the one who was just nuts about sport and instilled it in all of us.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, that's my grandma. Like, that's how I'm like, she was the same as Eddie Betts. Like, when he played for Adelaide, oh, couldn't say anything good about Eddie Betts when he went to Adelaide. But when he came back, oh, Eddie, what a man.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Oh, he's a great young, what a wonderful young man. Nan was the same with AFL. Mum's it with Rugby League. And yet I have two sisters who, you know, I remember the blood is low when we had, it was kicking through, you know, to win the game after the siren and sitting in a hotel room with my two sisters and my middle sister, Sarah and I were just sitting there glued up. Our brother was too young to come away. And my older sister just looked up and she said, oh, I get it. And we were like, what do you get? She said, I get that the room is made to look bigger because of the pattern they've got on the backs of the curtains and the way the pattern ties into it. Sarah and I were like, are you not watching what's about to happen here? And she's like, yeah, I don't really get sport. We definitely have both ends of the spectrum in the family.
BEN WATERWORTH: For sure. The most recent TV show that you binge watched.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Oh my God, Misrepresented on ABC.
BEN WATERWORTH: Nice.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I'll give you, actually, I could give you a, when I say that, I've watched that at like half an hour of the night when I'm trying to wind down. But the shows that I love, Yellowstone, Succession, Morning Wars, Mayor of East Town. Like all the recent ones that are just phenomenal that just have tickled me on so many different levels. Favourites to go back to, The Office, Schitt's Creek, Superstore, Hilarious, Ted Lasso. I mean, there's just so many. I could talk television 24 hours a day of the stuff that I love to binge watch. And then a million docos, oh my god, we start sports docos. I could list that for the next half hour. I love watching TV to wind down because that's something my husband loves to do. He goes to bed pretty early. So we have our viewing where we watch together, and then I just binge watch myself just till I fall asleep.
BEN WATERWORTH: And just for the sake of the Channel 7 executives, we'll do a take where you mention, oh, I love watching Home and Away, I love watching RFDS, The Voice, SAS.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I watch For Homes and Gardens every week because I get asked about, like I watch that religiously every week, I get asked about it every week, and I have to be across everyone's stories. And also I do love the fact it's a show that's just positive. I haven't seen RFDS because of the Olympics. And my mum hilariously sent me a text, this is Feddink, from the other day on the family chat. We have a family chat that, you know, a couple of hours ago, last year, you get 60 messages from them. And mum was like, hey, everyone, you need to watch this show. It's called The Voice. It's on channel seven, and it's amazing. And everyone just like piled on to her, because it's like, you know, it's been around for a while. She's like, no, no, no, I just saw it. It's new to channel seven, you have to watch. And then she just caught a barrage of messages for the rest of the night. And it just made me laugh. I just thought, wow, that's how commercial television keeps going.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I was literally going to say to you, can you just pass on the message to channel seven and say, if we get it, The Voice is on? That's all I was going to say.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: At least we lost after the Olympics this time around. We realised that there is a whole world after them. You don't have to jam it down people's throats.
BEN WATERWORTH: The words after the tennis and after the Olympics.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: People love those. And they worked for a number of years, and then everyone else started doing it. It was like, guys, we need to progress. Like television, like everything else, you need to keep evolving.
BEN WATERWORTH: Move through it. Your biggest fear in life is?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Apart from anything happening to the people that I love the most. So that would override absolutely everything. It would be height. I am genuinely, genuinely terrified of heights.
BEN WATERWORTH: I bet you're glad Who Dares Wins isn't a thing anymore, because if they try and get you on that.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I was asked to host that. No, but any of those shows, but I would be their dream because I would be hopeless. And it's also why I would never do any of those shows.
BEN WATERWORTH: Reboot it. We interviewed over on our sister show.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I think doing that anyhow with Holy Moly and all that.
BEN WATERWORTH: We interviewed David Mason, the EP. We talked to him about Australian, when Channel 7 had Celebrity Survivor, and that was his baby. He absolutely loved it. So I'm sure if Channel 7 wanted it, David Mason would probably get behind that. So-
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I'm not sure that I would want it or I would be involved with it. Like I managed to just ignore every single one of them. I remember dancing in the stars, they asked me about the eighth year straight. And I was like, so just a question, like I host the safest show that you have on the network. Why on earth would you have me go out, do something that I'm going to be terribly uncoerced, probably fall over, swear my head off? I booze everyone around me with Insight because I feel so humiliated. And then leave, like, how would that work for you, the network, or me? And they're like, yeah, okay, maybe not this year.
BEN WATERWORTH: So we're not seeing you on any reality show anytime. You're just the host, you're not a contestant.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Yeah, hosting, at least you can still care about the people in the weird part of reality, but you actually can. And I did, and I still love to see so many of the contestants on House Rules, but for me to do, and we've had the discussion with the network, for me to do another reality show, they would have to shift it significantly to be more positive. And I think there's a place for that. Like, I actually do think people would watch that. It's just trying to get them to break the mold before everyone else does, you're not copying, but you have to be the first to try something different and give it a crack.
BEN WATERWORTH: You know the show then that they should bring back, because it was a very positive show and a very underrated show in television history, Thorpey's Angels. Whatever happened to Thorpey's Angels? You could be one of Thorpey's Angels, right? Going out there doing good deeds for the community, I'm sure Thorpey would love us.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: We do that all the time on Better Homes and Gardens. But having said that, Thorpey was so fantastic on the Olympics Cup.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, amazing. He just, I don't think I've heard an expert commentator really open my eyes up to a sport as much. And the thing that was fascinating, we sort of said at the beginning, does Ian want to be there? He kind of sounds a bit bored, but by the end of it, he was like, holy crap, I just want to hear every single word he's telling us, because it was just so insightful.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Look, I think that's that thing too, where we've got to be very careful how we judge people if they're not the way that your expectations are, because Stoke has gone through a lot, and he's on a very personal journey to learn to like himself. So he was very nervous about that, but he knew he had something that he wanted Australia to see. And there were moments where he was doing the math of breaking down in relays and moments and picking up things that other people who've done it 10 times over weren't picking up. So I think I was a little bit annoyed at some of the, and I guess it's because of what I work with in mental health. I was a bit annoyed with some of the language around, he doesn't sound interested. Well, there's probably lots of reasons why he might not sound as interested as people are expecting. But if you actually go past that and you listen to what he's saying, he was bloody brilliant.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which the one thing that I absolutely loved is when him and Lisa would just have conversations and Basil would just let them talk. Because that's again, the insight. And that's what is great about having expert commentators on any broadcast is learning that insight. And that's obviously why they're there to kind of give it a take. And yes, it's fascinating. Like Ian Thorpe is just such a household name in this country that it's fascinating to hear someone like that give such an insight into the sport that we think we all know, but it's so more technical.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I think Matty Shervington did a little bit with the athletics as well. Sometimes I saw him in the afternoon shift. Have you had Basil on?
BEN WATERWORTH: No, look, if you hook me up with Basil, I'll be making some calls for you. I'll tell you one thing. I think it was actually during Ria when we first started, I tweeted Basil and he was like, I'd absolutely love to come on the show. But he's been a bit busy since then. He's kind of got a city to run. But I like the thing, my weird obsession with commentators over my life is that like Bruce Murray were my, you know, but I've always said that Basil is Bruce Jr. Like if you had a successor to Bruce, it's Basil. Cause he's just got so many things about him that is so similar to Bruce. So yeah, if you hook me up with Bruce and Basil Joe, I'm telling you now.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I'll tell you something funny. And it's funny cause you brought up the Stephen Bradbury. So often what goes on behind the scenes at an Olympics or a winter Olympics or a Paralympics is there's like this unspoken of, well not unspoken, cause we speak about it a lot, but the tally of the commentators who get to call these magic moments that, you know, are going to be part of Focal. So for Bazz, he has called actually so many of those bursts at each game. He's just hilariously almost unbearable because he just will remind you of it a thousand times. And he was asked, I think it was in Rio, he was asked if he wanted to do Chloe Esposito's, he was racing out the door and he said no. And so they kind of just came out now because, you know, that just the way it eventuates in a way that that sport works and you how are the scoring and the judging and everything happens with it and it all all of a sudden goes from not understanding any of the numbers to, oh my god, she's in contention to win.
BEN WATERWORTH: To the laser race, whatever it's called at the end, right? Like that's amazing.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: It was even before that, it's like she's in contention to win a medal. And then by the laser, it was a gold medal. And so they were madly scrambling because we only had international commentators. So they just come out into the main room and a couple of us who knew what was going on have just spoken hightales about it. We're like, no way. I do not understand this sport enough to work out. And I'm not good at math. So I'm not going to do it. And so all these people and Scott McGrawry was sitting there and they just came up and they're like, hey, Scott, do you want to do me a favour? I just need a little bit of help in the room. So I need to do some checks with it. And he's like, yeah, I'll go in. They're like, what do you want? Just calling a little bit of this event. And he's like, yeah. And then all of a sudden he sat down and he's realised what's happening and that she's in medal contention. And he's like, but I've got... And they're just like, don't worry, we're gonna get someone. And they've like put a researcher in who's just like mad, he's from Scrabbling Notes. And then he's just got into it. Right. So he then goes on to call that amazing gold medal. And he did such a brilliant, brilliant job. And that was actually, that's the one else who was brilliant and the courage. Like Scott is always amazing. But to hear Anna Mears, I felt like we saw and heard such a different side to Anna Mears. What we've known of her as a competitor and as a athlete. To hear her that there was 15 minutes, I think on the last day of the cycling, where Tokyo was just really behind the schedule. And she just opened up about how she'd never thought about cycling and what she did and how it impacted the coaches and the other team members and the people. And it was just like, we were literally about to go out and move around and then we were all just like, stop, just listen to this. This is unheard of. So you had those magic moments, but yeah, so Luke and I just say, we did win Tokyo because we had more gold medals than everyone else, because our shifts, yeah, we used to come back. Most of those can also be attributed to Basil and Sophie and Lisa.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, congratulations, I'll say that.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Thank you, thank you. We want something from us.
BEN WATERWORTH: To correct you, Jo, can I just quickly, I want to pull you up on something. It's Queen Chloe. Just to point that out.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: She deserves that, she deserves that. That was an amazing, amazing story.
BEN WATERWORTH: The most fascinating thing about that was that back during Rio, that was our first games that we covered here on Off The Podium. And day one, we were talking about favourite sports and you know, favourite, you know, quirky things that we like about the Olympics. I straight away was modern pentathlon. Like I love this sport. It is like the most incredible sport. And I just remember talking it up and like, hey, we're only three days away from it, two days away from it, one day away from it. And because of what happened in the middle of the night, and I'd sort of been staying up really late, I remember waking up and I think like I'm zoning onto my team, and I'm like, oh, the modern potassium's on. And I'm seeing this footage of like Australia got, I'm like, oh, this is, I'm dreaming. Like this is, I've been talking about it for the last week and a half. Then all of a sudden I realised that we had won a gold medal. And I just, and like the whole episode was just a tribute to Chloe. And I'm, this is the first time I'm saying it on the show right now, but to our listeners, Chloe's on the show in a couple of weeks.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Well, you know, we're getting a little backstroke. Even what she did, like one, what her dad has done for the sport, but also what she did to go away and kind of do it all by herself, where there was such a question mark over the, she's phenomenal and she's such a beautiful human being. Again, it comes back to me about the person and her story and how generous she is and how generous she is with the current crop of athletes. And I think we all had that moment when Tokyo was, they were like, oh, maybe she'll be back for it. Where she's like, hello, I'm gonna lie from, you know, a baby and all the rest of it. But for us, we're just like, just do it again, just for us.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, do it, yeah. I did a blog post kind of doing my favourite sporting moments of the decade, and I included her win in Rio. And the other athlete who I love to death, Esa Ladeca, winning sort of the gold in the snowboarding and the skiing in Pyeongchang. I mean, just insane feat for that. So, yeah, I'm a fanboy deep down at Heart Joe.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Hey, so am I, but that's the thing. Like, that's why we, that's why, and so are the people who listen to your podcast, and so are the people who, even if they have their gripes about what Seven are doing, who watch every moment and get sucked into it. Because we love, as I said, it comes back to the stories, it comes back to the people, it comes back to that little bit of joy that they give you. And it's why the Tokyo Olympics were so extra special this time round. Normally, in a lead up to an Olympics, you can almost map to the day, drug scandals, transport scandals, venue scandals. You can almost, it doesn't matter if it's comm games or an Olympic games, you can almost map out, they worked out at 60 days ago, 50 days ago, 40 days ago, what's going to be the story? How can we be negative? Because COVID took all that away, and none of us really believed it was going to happen till it happened. When it did happen, you had such rawness from the athletes, because it did take such a mental and physical toll on them all, and in lots of different ways. So sometimes it was the athletes who were just frustrated. Sometimes it was the athletes who realised it was a golden time that's gone. Sometimes it was the older athletes going, how the hell am I going to keep my body physically at this level for another 12 months? So you had all these different angles and stories that came from the delay alone. Then you had them, like the rest of us, amazed that it could actually progress and progress safely as had been promised. And then without crowds and without family and without friends and all the usual, you know, distractions that they would have at a guys wherever else off party and doing the rest of it, you actually had athletes whose only connection to their family was through that interview at the end of a pool or a track or off a court. And it's why it resonated so much for all of us, whether you're working, watching, just loving every second of it or hating it. You loved it because of how real it was.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, for sure. Memorable experience. And some of the, so many of the athletes we've had on from Tokyo, just talking about how, yeah, they're part of such a unique games in history. And obviously for you to be sort of part of that broadcast team too, it's something you will definitely remember for the rest of your life. Last question. What is one thing you can't live without?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: My family. I'm testing at the moment. I'm nine, what is it? Nine weeks in. I've got two and a half weeks to go before I, hopefully we'll be allowed to go home and see them. And I know there's loads of people who have way longer separations than that. I usually travel a lot. I accept that it's part of my life, but one thing that 2020 gave me was a lot more time at home. And I've got a little grandson now. I'm one of those strange people that loves my husband to death. I love my kids. One of them is in far north Queensland. One of them lives and works in our company and lives with us. And I am craving the normality of the daggy stuff that I get to do with them, because I'm very grateful that they let me just go away and live my dream and do all this. And I bore them endlessly like I will bore your listeners with stories of sport and athletes and all the rest. But they are the things that feed my soul.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I don't know what you're talking about, boring. Because I mean, seriously, this is our longest.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: You're up to like a fifth hour of this podcast.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I mean, I was about to say, you hold another distinction now. You're officially our longest interview, but I mean, it's flown by in my eyes. So it's great to kind of learn everything here and get all those stories. And people know who you are. People know everything about that. But if anything you want to plug right now, Jo, like social media, anything out there, your organisations, your work for kind of, take this opportunity now to plug whatever you like. You might not get to do this on seven, so you can do whatever you want now.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Oh, I do it all the time. I'm one of those moldy moles who gets my point across. What would I plug? I would plug the Paralympics. I think if you think how amazing the stories were in the Olympics, get to know the backstories of the athletes in the Paralympics. It will change everything of preconceived ideas that you have on so many levels. So the Paralympics would be one. They start the 24th of August, I'm not sure when you published this, but 24th of August to the 5th of September.
BEN WATERWORTH: If it's after that, people can watch the highlights.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: It will be on seven plus for eternity. Actually, I don't know about how that works with contracts, but it'll be somewhere. You'll be able to find it on the 5th of August. So I would do Paralympics. I would plug Beyond Blue because obviously I'm really passionate about mental health, and there's a lot of people who are really struggling at the moment, and I would just reiterate that message that the first step you take is the hardest, but you can actually take steps to recovery, and that there's a lot of people, doesn't matter what your background, what your circumstances are, mental health doesn't discriminate, but there is light at the end of that tunnel, which we might not feel like at that initial stage. And I would obviously plug Better Homes and Gardens, 90 minutes of joy and happiness.
BEN WATERWORTH: And when is that air, Jo? When can people watch that?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: Friday nights from 7pm on 7 and 7.2, depending on where you are in the country. And it is just a joy to work on. It's why the show has been going for 28 years. I'm hosting it for the 18th year. And we just have the best people on camera. We have the best people off camera. We just don't have anyone who works on that show who doesn't believe in what we think are the values of what it puts out into the world. And all the other things that I will eventually do, watch this space. But seriously, it has just been a joy talking to you, Ben. It's been so much fun.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I've had an absolute blast, Jo. I came into this hoping to get one thing out and I got a million and one other things out of it. So I think it's been an absolutely fantastic time.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: And face it, you're just going, I hopefully have got Bruce and Basil.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's all I've used you for. I've literally gone, I'm like, do we?
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I'm happy to be used, because I think they're both such awesome people. I think you would love it.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's like Bruce and Basil, how do I get them on the show? Yeah, Jo Griggs might, she's a nice lady. She might do that.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: I have never been happier to be used, Ben. Never been happier.
BEN WATERWORTH: Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. We definitely appreciate your time.
JOHANNA GRIGGS: You are so welcome, and I have loved every second of it too.
BEN WATERWORTH: And a big thanks to Jo there. Absolutely incredible chat there. I told you, it was worth every single second of it. Amazing interview, an insightful interview. And maybe we're gonna rethink how we talk about Channel 7 moving forward. So maybe we'll have to rethink some segments come Beijing in a few months time. But an amazing, amazing chat. And if you're in Australia, watch Better Homes and Gardens as well, because everyone loves Jo, and you've gotta keep her on your TV screens every single week, of course, too. If you heard me say though, in that interview with Jo, we hadn't announced it in any social media, we hadn't announced it in any other episode. But just saying, that is true what I said, the one, the only Queen Chloe Esposito will be on this show very soon. So stay tuned for that. You know, we're excited about that, and we know you're gonna be excited that finally we've got it. We've finally gotten Chloe, and she's coming on this very show to talk to us. So stay tuned for that. If this is our longest interview today, we're Johanna Griggs. I mean, imagine how long our Chloe Esposito episode is gonna go for. But we'll see how that goes very, very soon. Stay tuned for that. And also stay tuned to our social media. Remember to hit us up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Simply search for Off The Podium. You can leave us some feedback, messages, anything you like. If there's any other Olympians or behind the scenes Olympians, broadcasters, anybody out there that you can think of that you'd like to hear from, shoot us a message, send us a request, and we'll see what we can do in the meantime as well. And of course, subscribe to the podcast. All good podcast channels out there. You can search Off The Podium. Mash that subscribe button. Leave us some feedback. We love to hear what you think about the show. Give us a rating. And we very much would appreciate that along the way as well. We appreciate you listening today. We appreciate Johanna Griggs' time. What an interview, what a time. I'm gonna go have a lay down and recover from one of the best interviews we've had on this show. Stay tuned, we'll have more to come. My name is Ben, this is Off The Podium, and we'll speak to you next time. Good night.
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