ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Laughing off a suggestion he’s the Rob Quiney of the Olympic canoeing K-4 1000 metres event, Mike Rocter said he was just happy to have the opportunity to represent his country at the highest level.
“No, seriously, guys,” he said, swatting the air with his giant hands.
“Rob Quiney is arguably the best bloke to ever wear a pair of pads in this country, I work in a bank! I can’t be a good bloke! [laughs] No, it’s OK,”
“I’m living a good life. Happy. I’m a lucky man.”
Mike grew up learning to canoe in the mighty Diamantina River that slices through this town like the Thames, Tigres and Brisbane do for other great cities around the world.
A young Michael shot to local fame in 1995 after qualifying for the Atlanta Olympics and our town came together to support him to make sure his dream came true, raising funds to get him the equipment he and his teammates needed to win gold.
Sadly, Mike ultimately placed last in his solo events.
He blamed the poor performances on his mother’s affair with The Advocate’s editor, Dr Clancy Overell OAM, becoming public while he was in the United States competing.
Nevertheless, after retiring in 1997, Mike was offered a job at the Diamantina Credit Union despite not having any banking experience what so ever.
Speaking to The Advocate this morning, Mike recalled that seasonably mild September morning.
“I thought it was weird,” he said.
“Why was a bank offering me a job? What did I know about banking? Nothing! I thought it was weird,”
“But it soon became apparent what my job actually was. It wasn’t anything to do about banking.”
Mike said he spent most of his workdays looking at things on the internet, like Ducatis and .onion sites advertising the services of hitman and drug dealers.
Nobody cared. Not even when he had synthetic cocaine mailed to the office from Azerbaijan.
It wasn’t until he started to be dragged along to client meetings with his boss that the penny finally dropped.
“Basically, my job is to sit quietly at the end of the table until the meeting is beginning to draw to a close, then I add a sporting anecdote about the Olympics or something. All the old blokes we do business with shoot their bolts whenever I talk about the 1996 games,”
“The debauchery of the Olympic village, bearing witness to the high-octane train wreck that was Michael Diamond’s first encounter with a bucket bong, the story of how Dawn Fraser and I got really turnt up one night and ending up in College Park where she hooked up with Big Boi from Outkast while I goanna wrestled Andre (3000) outside in the front yard,”
“You know the song Jazzy Belle from Outkast’s album, ATLiens? Yeah, it’s about Dawn. No bullshit. How good is that yarn?”
“I’ve got really good stories that I tell at meetings which get us over the line, in terms of business. I really feel like I’m part of a team again. I used to feel bad that my business cards told lies, telling people that I was a client wealth manager or whatever they said. Now I feel great,”
“I bet there’s hundreds of other sporting greats out there in similar roles. We’re lucky ducks.”
More to come.
