Olympics

Julia Gillard needs time to repair her scarified personal standing in the broad electorate and this year simply will not give it to her. She also needs time to reorient political debate to economic management and other areas of relative Government strength. Again there simply will not be enough days for her in 2012.

This is a measure of both the magnitude of the Prime Minister’s plight and the crammed agendas for this year, the crucial positioning period leading up to the scheduled election in 2013.

This week Ms Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will bid to impose their own structure on the national debate in major speeches—Mr Abbott tomorrow and Ms Gillard the day after.

Continue reading "So much ground to make up, so little time to do it" »

IAN Thorpe’s comeback to Olympic swimming could be as disastrous as the former champion’s illegal flop into the pool at the 2004 Olympic trials. Thorpe’s freakish ability to carve up the pool and wipe out his opponents has been proven time and time again. But his powers to overcome hurdles to make it back on the Olympic dais are weakening, year by year.

Thorpe will make the Australian Olympic team. He is such a perfectionist that he will make it happen. But whether he wins an individual medal – or a world record for that matter – is now a topic of great debate. It’s been almost 10 years since Thorpie smashed a world record – Manchester’s 2002 Commonwealth Games in the 400m freestyle. His world records were broken over a period of five years – when his body was still growing. In 2002, Thorpe was just 19. He never broke a world record after Manchester.

After Thorpe stopped growing, we never saw the form he produced as a teenager. Here are 10 reasons why Thorpie won’t set the world on fire in London 2012.

Continue reading "10 reasons why Thorpe won’t claim a world record again" »

Recently News.com.au published an article from Brisbane’s Courier-Mail and a poll calling for the banning of the Aussie sporting war cry “Oi! Oi! Oi!” on grounds that it’s embarrassing.

When I last checked, the yeas were outnumbering the nays two to one and I find that distressing.

I’m not remotely embarrassed to say I love the Aussie Aussie Aussie warcry.

Continue reading "There’s nothing wrong with the Aussie bogan slogan" »

Everyone’s got pet hates.  Mine include sniffing milk to “see” if it’s still ok to drink, spitting in public streets, couples who refer to themselves in the third person and people that persist in holiday countdowns on their Facebook updates.

But just because this is my list, that doesn’t mean that all Australian people want to throw up when they watch someone’s nose nestle into the lid of a communal carton of milk or clears their throat and deposits the contents onto the street.

Continue reading "Olympics 101: How to be nice to foreign people" »

I can’t believe I’m saying this about the woman who had her fake breast removed for Australia, but I think it’s time we let Jana Rawlinson go from the shackles of her colonial confinement.

As much as the Commonwealth Games champ has showered Australia with gratitude for all the years of Woman’s Day covers and tolerance of her Olympic choking, it’s pretty clear we haven’t lived up to our end of the bargain.

Now she’s pulled out of the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, it’s the perfect opportunity for us to say Jana, it breaks our hearts, but if you want to go and run for England in the London Olympics we’ll try very hard to get over it.

Continue reading "It will be painful, but it’s time to set Jana Rawlinson free" »

If they were handing out gold medals for the most bizarre Olympic mascots, the recently unveiled characters for the London 2012 games would wins hands down.

That is, if they had hands. Wenlock and Mandeville (catchy names) were apparently “created from “the last two drops of British steel used for the London 2012 Olympic Stadium.” More like an alcohol and substance fuelled creativeworkshopthinktank.

To me they look like the result of a frenzied sexual encounter between a secondhand Logie award and a Teletubbie. And the blue one looks like it has an incontinence problem.

Continue reading "The Poms are a weird mob" »

Thanks to Channel Nine’s captivating coverage of the Vancouver Olympics Games you might have missed the news this week that pole dancers are bidding to have their ‘sport’ included as a test event at the 2012 London Olympics. 

KT Coates, director of UK pole exercise school, Vertical Dance, is leading the campaign.  ‘After a great deal of feedback from the pole-dance community, many of us have decided that it’s about time pole fitness is recognised as a competitive sport, and what better way for recognition than to be part of the 2012 Olympics held in London,’ she said.

So far a petition to get pole dancing to London has attracted some 4000 signatures.  The Vertical Dance website notes that ‘by signing our petition you are showing the powers that be, that we seriously believe in the Vertical Bar.’

Continue reading "Faster, higher, raunchier?" »

Australia has already had two wins at the Vancouver Winter Olympics and the main events have not yet started.

Firstly the International Olympic Committee has agreed that the very large Boxing Kangaroo flag can be hung from a balcony at the Olympic village.

Ian Chesterman the chef de mission with the Australian team is delighted and said it is something that has become synonymous with Australians competing around the world.

Continue reading "Postcard from Vancouver" »

The Greco-Roman wrestling is not widely remembered as one of the high points of the Sydney Olympics.

It gets squeezed out by a few other things, like Cathy Freeman winning gold in the 400m, Jane Saville breaking down upon her disqualification just metres from the finish line in the walking, the women’s water polo team robbing the Yanks on the siren, the swimmers winning pretty much everything, their sweetest victory against the cocky American men’s relay team.

Golden moments all. But it was at the Greco Roman wrestling – that gladiatorial contest where blokes called Vitek and Krysto try to give each other wedgies - where I witnessed an Olympic moment so golden it almost made me weep tears of joy at being lucky enough to have been born in this absurd and excellent little country of ours.

Continue reading "Faster, higher, awesomer at absolutely bloody everything" »

The Independent Sport Panel has just reported to Sports Minister Kate Ellis after a year-long look at our national pastime. Aside from some recommendations about restructuring and administration, it had two key questions that go straight to the heart of our sporting spirit - what’s the definition of success and which sports are important?

Panel chair David Crawford said we might need to kiss goodbye our ambitions to a top five Olympic ranking. “The Panel strongly believes the public needs to be educated to think differently about what constitutes Olympic success,” the report overview says.

He also listed the sports the Panel defined as carrying the “national ethos.” They were Swimming, tennis, cricket, cycling, the football codes, netball, golf, hockey, basketball, surfing and surf lifesaving. “If more money is to be injected into the system then we must give serious consideration to where that money is spent.”

Continue reading "Every Olympian gets a medal?" »

The Aussie Dolphins are in the doldrums. No doubt about it.

The Aussies are no longer the powerhouse that ruled the pool in 2001 at Fukuoka’s world championships.

The Dolphins peaked at Fukuoka. Ian Thorpe was on fire, breaking three world records in individual freestyle events. Grant Hackett smashed Kieren Perkins’ seemingly elusive world record in the 1500m freestyle. It was gold, gold, gold – a total of 13 gold medals to Australia.

Continue reading "Getting the Dolphins out of the doldrums" »

I know this goes against everything else I’ve written about women having the same opportunities as men but I just can’t cop women’s boxing.

News overnight it’s been put on the list for the 2012 Olympics has been hailed as a triumph for feminism, as it means there will no longer be any men-only Olympic sports.

But the right to get in a ring and beat each other about the head is not exactly what I had in mind as a great leap forward for equality of the sexes.

Continue reading "One Olympic sport I won’t be watching - women’s boxing" »

I call them “floaties” - swimsuits that float. Just watch all the torpedoes fly on top of the water in Rome. Today’s elite swimmer makes the original Thorpedo – Ian Thorpe – look like a slowcoach.

The deluge of world records this week at the FINA World Championships is nothing but a farce.

Swimming’s governing body, FINA, has made a serious blunder which has triggered the ridiculous number of world marks.

Continue reading "‘Floaties’ make a mockery of elite swimming" »

I sat next to Matthew Mitcham on the plane to Beijing. He asked me a question that no man has before or since. As the plane hurtled down the runway, I was fumbling with the words to the Lord’s Prayer when Mitcham turned to me and said: “Do you like musicals?”

I enjoy musicals about as much as knee reconstructions. Or plane trips. As Mitcham talked and talked about one show tune or another, I became convinced a mental patient wearing an official Olympic tracksuit had been let loose on the plane. The next time I looked out the window we were approaching 20,000-feet.

Of course, once the landing gear was folded away it became clear that helping a stranger to overcome a morbid fear of take-off was his intention from the start. That’s the type of guy Matt Mitcham is.

Continue reading "The Australian athlete who won gold for grace in defeat" »

Over the past 18 months I have regularly been presented with two opposing yet pretty extreme views on the issue of sports funding.

On one hand you have the sport die hards who set the sky as the limit; you know the argument - give sport whatever it takes to win gold, gold, gold or whatever dollars is needed to beat the Poms at everything and anything!

Then there is, quite literally, the other side of the coin. Why should we use taxpayers money to fund those athletes that are already exceptionally well paid to fly around the world to play games when the money could be better spent on…please insert policy priority of choice.

Continue reading "Should successful athletes have to pay back the AIS?" »