The Beijing Games Draw To A Close

The Beijing Olympic Games are all but over and the medals have been won, at least one of them has been chucked away and one referee has been kicked in the head because someone didn’t win one.

Australia finished with 14 gold medals which sits pretty close to expectations, although according to the news reports, Australian sport is in a little bit of trouble because we were down on the Australian Olympic Committee’s (AOC) prediction. As an average Joe, stock standard Aussie, I say rubbish. The haul of medals pulled down by our athletes was right on the money.

I reckon any gold medal tally that sits between 10 – 20 is perfect – just enough to make every last one of them special and able to be celebrated fully. While it would have been nice to win more, you accept that not everything goes to plan and there are always going to be surprises in sport.

And it’s the surprise gold medals that make the greatest impact. Matthew Mitcham winning the gold medal in the 10m Platform Diving on the second last day will long live in many Australian’s memories. That it came completely out of the blue, with even the Australian commentators completely writing his chances off before “that” dive, made it all the more sweet.

Yes, the Olympics are over for another Olympiad, China has put on a great show and Australia can be well proud of their efforts. Memorable moments in the Games for me? It’s got to be Usain Bolt on the track and Michael Phelps in the pool.

Stupid Interview Questions

I had to laugh out loud while watching the Olympics last night. Sally McLellan had just run a wonderful semi-final in the Womens 100m Hurdles to make the final and she was clearly over the moon. Naturally Channel 7 were there to shove a microphone under her out of breath nose demanding that she talk rather than recover from her efforts.

It was Pat Welsh doing the interviewing and he seems armed with an endless supply of dumbass questions that he is equally capable at trotting out at the athletics as he is at the golf. At some point, wouldn’t you think these guys would pause for a minute, work out some insightful questions and use them rather than the dross they appear to be happy chucking at our athletes?

When Pat asked McLellan “Did you realise you’re the first Australian to make the final in the 100m hurdles since Glynnis Nunn?” she came back with “I don’t care about that, I’m in the final now.” Ka-pow, take that dickhead.

Why the fuck would Sally McLelland care who made an Olympic final more than 20 years ago when she was celebrating the biggest moment of her sporting career. Good on her for her response to a dim-witted question. Are we going to have to take out an AVO to keep these idiot reporters away from our sporting stars?

Olympic Gripe #1

The local television station that holds the broadcast rights to the Olympic Games has, quite predictably I suppose, brought a slew of complaints onto themselves after only 2 days of action. They simply refuse to tell their viewers what time the events will be aired and it is seriously pissing everyone off. They’re playing the old “coming up is the swimming finals” game with us, advertising the upcoming events all day but not revealing exactly when the events will be on.

Now, I’m well aware that the TV station wants to keep as many people as they can watching for as long as possible, so to keep everyone hanging around for the promise of a big event is in their interest. But you piss people off long enough and it eventually comes back to bite you in the arse.

Speaking for myself, I’m happy to record the Games and fast forward to the bits I want to see, after all, because the IOC has decided to screw with the 2008 Olympic swimming program (stuff the athletes, as long as the Americans get to watch it in prime time that’s all that counts!!!) the swimming finals are on while I’m at work. So run your ads, I don’t care, when you’re zooming along at 30x normal speed on fast forward, you don’t really take all that much in.