The smooth operator

Andrew Mathieson
SPEAKING with the poise and diction that embodies a burgeoning media career, Geelong’s Peter Larkins perfectly fits the bill of his Doctor Smooth persona.
The nickname has stuck for the past six years since radio colleagues attending a sponsor’s function had a bit of fun at the expense of the doc’s unique attire.
They had only seen Peter dressed in casual clothes better suited to copping spilled beer and debris from fans’ pies and sauce while reporting back on footballers’ injuries from the boundary line at AFL games.
“I turned up in an Italian suit, a handmade silk tie, a beautiful customised shirt from Hong Kong and, I think, new shoes,” Peter recalls of the day he earned his nickname.
“As I walked in, (commentator) James Brayshaw, who fancies himself as a bit of a fashion expert, says, ‘Doc, looking smooth – have a look at Dr Smooth’.”
The joke wore thin after it was broadcast on air but nowadays it’s a registered trademark, he admits.
The respected sports doctor had worked out the back of Kardinia Park’s medical room and later for the Adelaide Crows during games in Victoria until Eddie McGuire stopped him signing up for another season.
“Don’t sign,” Eddie told Peter, “because we’re going to cover the footy next year.
“I’ve got a team we’re putting together.”
After first meeting when a young Eddie would ring up about the intricacies of injuries, he hinted to Peter about giving a live prognosis when players were hobbling off the ground.
“I thought at first I was going to call the footy,” Peter confessed.
His then-naivety of the media world still gets a laugh from footy colleagues in the box when they give him some good-natured ribbing about his lack of AFL experience.
But just as quick he responds by naming all Olympic, Commonwealth and World Cup campaigns he ran for Australia between 1975 and 1983.
As a middle-distance runner, Peter excelled on the flat runs over 800 and 1500 metres until he first witnessed the grace of the steeplechase.
“I had a crack at a junior steeplechase out at Corio over 1500 metres when I was about 17 and I missed the Australian (junior) record by three seconds in my first-ever race,” he remembers.
Peter would later make a name capturing numerous Australian titles and breaking national records over the standard 3000-metre steeplechase but the pet event didn’t dull his love for the 1500 metres nor his chances.
“It was still sexy to be a good mile runner in the 1970s,” Peter says.
“The metric mile (1500m) was the prestige event in athletics but in the steeplechase you were always getting beaten by Kenyans.”
Peter made history when he was one of the few to participate in the birth of Little Athletics back in 1962.
A small group of young kids would gather at South Geelong’s Landy Field where athletics mentor Trevor Billingham organised Australia’s first morning competition.
“I was actually the first little athlete ever to make it to an Olympic team,” Peter notes of the time he appeared 14 years later at the Montreal Games.
“I was first down there watching my older brother in the afternoons, my dad was the timekeeper back then, so I used to get in the way of the officials.
“We used to have our own little races down the back straight when the gun went off.”
Running was always in the blood despite Peter’s role captaining St Joseph’s College football and cricket teams.
However, turning his back on a school football premiership was made easier when as a teenager he was already representing Victoria in athletics.
“I remember getting hauled up before the headmaster who said I had no school spirit, that I was letting the school down,” Peter recalls.
“But I was still representing the school in running because I decided in my final year to concentrate on studies and athletics.
“That year they won the flag without me, so they didn’t miss me.”