By Michael Gleeson
Several years ago Athletics Australia held a press conference with John Steffensen. They were never sure what Steffensen would say at the best of times but knew that when he spoke he got people's attention. So they held their breath and offered him up.
The athlete understood the moment, walked up, smiled and said: "In John we trust." It was at once brash and self-effacing.
Athletics Australia didn't always trust Steffensen. For most of his career his sport didn't know what to make of him. Twice banned, he also won an Olympic relay silver medal and Commonwealth Games gold.
Yet now Steffensen, a former 400-metres runner, is not only drawn back inside the tent of athletics but he has been brought in with a plea: help us fix this. Even his most ardent fan would not have foreseen Steffensen as the sport's saviour.
Front man: Former 400m runner John Steffensen hopes the new Nitro concept will reinvigorate athletics. Credit: Josh Robenstone
Right now, once more, in John they trust.
"I swore on my life I was never ever going to be part of Athletics Australia. I lost a good 18 months of my career. I can't tell you the hundreds of thousands of dollars I lost in sponsorship and I will never get that back. But forget the money, I will never get my youth back," he said.
"It's a crazy journey. I said to a friend of mine: 'Why me? Why do I feel like I am in this position?' "
This is not a revisionist story to suggest there has been no fault on Steffensen's part. There has been. He admits as much – "maybe I could have handled it a lot better at times, my maturity is a lot better now at 34. It's a lot different to what I was at 24" – but both Steffensen and his sport have chosen to get past that.
"I am in a boardroom with two people that were part of the board when I got banned. I had to get over that quickly and move on with the future," he said.
He is now the front man and engine for change of the new Nitro athletics concept, which is hoped will not only reinvigorate athletics but redefine what a track meet can be. It is unashamedly a grab for eyeballs and dollars.
The future for the sport is Nitro, Steffensen says. Why? Because if it is not Nitro then the future is unspeakably bleak.
Athletics meets around the world are rotting on the vine. The same format that has worked for a hundred years now only works for the big meets: Olympics, world championships, Commonwealth Games. If it doesn't change it will die.
If what you were doing was not working and you wanted to completely rethink how you handled your sport, then Steffensen was a reasonable place to start. As an athlete he was as much a showman as a sportsman. He was loud and provocative, but always watchable. And he is connected.
Usain Bolt will run here next year not because he likes Melbourne in the summer but because he has been Steffensen's friend for a decade. He has bought into the idea of Nitro because he as much as anyone understands that athletics needs something new the world over. He draws a crowd but knows few others do.
Bolt will ensure the series gets watched. It is then a matter for others whether the sport can keep people watching the new format when he is not there.
Nitro will not be about replicating a day at the Olympics and is not purely about high performance. It is to athletics orthodoxy what a reverse sweep was to Test batting.
"I believe for myself how I was able to make a brand for myself I understood the fine line between entertainment and performance," Steffensen said.
"It's time we commercialised the sport and started to promote the sport properly so I can build something for my kids. I believe around the world athletics is dying quickly. You saw in Oslo the crowd numbers this year – I have never seen crowd numbers like that in my life – and that is international, let alone what we see domestically."
So the sport has taken its cue from Fast Five netball, Twenty20 cricket and Fast4 tennis to deliver easily digestible, accessible sport made for TV.
Steffensen wants to encourage the type of characters that sports have traditionally struggled with. Characters like him. Characters such as Nick Kyrgios, athletes about whom the sports enjoy the attention they bring but not always the baggage.
"We have to have a brand structure for those who are different, for those who are like Kyrgios we have to have understanding … [but] it is not now free-for-all and athletes can do what they want," he said.
He wants athletes people want to watch. So while Michelle Jenneke and Melissa Breen recently lost sports funding, they are likely to be sought after for Nitro.
As an AA board member, Steffensen is concerned how they are handled. Breen, Australia's fastest woman, lost her funding because she disappointed in Rio, which followed previous below-par performances at major championships.
Rather than try to work out how to take her to the next level AA cut herfunding.
"It's our role to understand why and make them better not criticise and as soon as they do not perform kick them to the curb. I never understood that concept I just don't think that is the way you develop the sport.
"Sometimes we are too quick to abandon instead of work out how we fix this problem."
Similarly the most popular face of athletics at the Rio Games, hurdler Jenneke, lost funding after underperforming at the Olympics, where she arrived below her best condition.
"Michele is a property which is valuable which is her brand of Michelle Jenneke and it's important for the sport ... it's up to us to work on the performance side," he said.
Those are high-performance questions, not Nitro issues. For Nitro, they are naturals to be involved because they are women people want to watch.
"The first thing for athletics is to recognise you have a problem then make the changes and Nitro is the first part of change."
Athletics recognised they had a problem and went to Steffensen for change. In John they trust.