20 years ago, our Olympic success was overshadowed by one woman. She was named Lay Down Sally.

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Australia is on a winning streak at this year's Paris Olympics — sitting pretty on the leaderboard in fourth place. 

Securing seven gold, six silver and three bronze so far, this could be one of the country's greatest games. But it will be a tall order to match the unprecedented success the nation had 20 years ago at the Athens Olympic Games with Australia winning 50 medals and finishing fourth on the medal table — an unmatched ranking for our humble country. 

But despite this game proving to be the most successful Olympics for Australia so far, with the likes of Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett dominating the competition, the 2004 Olympics was overshadowed by one moment.

Yep. We need to talk about Lay Down Sally. For the uninitiated, this was the name bestowed upon Sally Robbins, a rower for Australia who infamously laid down while competing. 

It's a legacy that Australia's current rowing team still can't escape. 

Lucy Stephan will row in the upcoming women's eight in Paris, but claims the team still gets trolled for the 2004 incident.

"It really irks me," Stephan told The Courier Mail ahead of the games. 

"It’s been almost 20 years and I’ll walk into an airport [in team uniform] and there'll be some person that's like, 'Oh, Lay Down Sally'... We've had so many incredible results but in women's rowing for some reason, we remember the bad thing about it." 

The 'bad thing' in question came about when Sally was rowing in the final of the women's eight rowing event. Australia’s crew had rushed into fifth position when with 500m remaining, Robbins suddenly dropped her oar, stopped rowing and lay down into the lap of her teammate, Julia Wilson.

Sally Robbins stops rowing at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Image: AAP. 

Australia dropped into sixth position behind Germany — to be clear, we probably weren't even in the top three either way? — and an Australian scandal was born, quickly dubbed 'Lay Down Sally'.

To say that what followed was an absolute media sh*tshow would be an understatement. And, if it happened today, the reaction would likely be quite different.

At the time, Sally tried to explain what had happened. 

"Suddenly fatigue sets in and I just can't move. It's a feeling of paralysis where you just hit the wall. I just rowed my guts out in the first 1500 and didn't have anything left and that’s all I could have done for today," she said. 

"I did whatever I could and my best was what I put out there today and I plan to keep rowing. This experience only makes me stronger. I will just say that I did everything I could. This is what I could do today and I put 110 per cent in, and that’s what everyone does."

However, this account was not supported by her teammates, who weren't shy about sharing their disappointment with Sally's performance. 

Rower Kyeema Doyle declared she would quit the team and go solo. "I will go back to single sculls for a while," she said. "There is a little bitter taste in my mouth." 

Team captain Julia Wilson was even more scathing in her comments. "I just want to stress it was not a technical problem out there — no seat broke, there was nothing wrong with the boat, there was nothing wrong with the seven other athletes around me," she told Channel 7.

"We had nine in the boat. There were eight operating." 

As teammates flung insults back and forth, the furore around Robbins continued to explode, with headlines covering every front page of national newspapers and specials airing on nightly news shows.  

Sally Robbins gives an interview in 2004. Image: AAP. 

The Daily Telegraph labelled her actions as "unforgivable" as some even went as far as to call her 'unAustralian'.

The negative discourse wasn't helped by the conspiracy theories that started to spread, suggesting Robbins shouldn't have made the rowing team in the first place. These were stoked by her teammates claiming that the rower had done something similar at the 2002 world championships, preventing Australian from winning gold in the quad scull.

It's worth noting that in the early '00s, there was little awareness or care for how someone's mental health challenges could impact their athletic abilities. This period was a far cry from the empathy offered towards Simone Biles when she pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, or Naomi Osaka pulling out of the French Open that same year, with both women citing mental health concerns. 

This is not to say that no one defended Lay Down Sally at the time. Not everyone added to the Sally Robbins pile-on, but the rower's toughest critics tended to be some of the loudest voices. 

Prime Minister John Howard eventually entered the debate by trying to call for calm between the warring rowers. "I'm not taking sides but it's always regrettable, it's tough and there's a lot of pressure," he told Channel 9 at the time. 

"It's always a good idea to bind together but look, I wasn't there and I can understand the passion the emotion and the effort that goes into these things and the sense of disappointment people feel."

Thankfully, the outrage eventually died down and Robbins would eventually get to move on with her life beyond the controversy. She even wrote a tongue-in-cheek column for WA Today called ‘Sally Stands Up' and later, a musical was developed about the saga, titled Lay Down Sally: An Oarsome New Musical Robbin’ Hearts Around The World. 

I'm not kidding. 

Reflecting on the saga in 2021, Sally's rowing mate Katie Foulkes told the Idle Australians podcast that "one of the things I really struggled with post-Athens was this idea of there being a victim—whether it was us or whether it was Sally." 

After failing to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Robbins ended up settling down in Brisbane where she opened a yoga studio and welcomed a daughter in early 2017.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics, she sent positive sentiments to the next generation of Australian sports stars. 

"I am so proud to be an Olympian and wish our next Olympians at Paris the very best. We are all behind you and know how much hard work you have put in to get to this point. I am ever so grateful for the support I received from near and far," Sally wrote on social media. 

"I am at peace with my past and excited for my future." 

Feature image: AAP. 

Watch the Olympics on Stan Sport, the only place to watch every event ad-free with 4K and international multi-language channels. Go to Stan.com.au/Olympics for more info.

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