Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for August, 2008
Olympics. It Doesn’t Take Much To Lose.
13 August 2008
It’s been revealed what cost the rowing favourites Australia a place in the final.
You might remember we reported yesterday that the eights team stopped dead early in their heat, then drifted into the next lane. Their rudder had broken, meaning they had to stop, or they would’ve gone around in cricles.
The mental image I had of the problem was a rudder hanging off the boat by a wire, broken and useless, but a team official has now revealed that it wasn’t the whole rudder that broke, but a section, no bigger than a fingernail.
A fingernail. A piece of metal the size of a fingernail broke and four years of hard work has headed the way of the sewer.
As I mentioned yesterday, golds are won by microseconds, and microsecond miscalculations are all it takes for gymnasts to fall off their apparatus.
If they keep their precision, they may get a medal. Four years of precision work. King (or Queen) of the world. In the local newspapers. Victory parade on arrival home.
Then back to putting out the garbage just like everyone else.
Some of these athletes are so young, that I wonder if they know what they are challenging for. They have been training since, maybe, the age of eight. It’s all they’ve known. It’s been their life. Leisel Jones was the youngest swimming medallist in history when, at age 14, she won silver at the Sydney Olympics. When she got bronze at Athens four years later, her disappointment was extreme. But she hung in there, and yesterday came up with a gold.
I just hope now that she’s achieved the dream of her lifetime, she looks at life. She’s announced that she will probably be competing at London in 2012, so maybe the life will have to wait, yet again. Either way, good on you Leisel. It’s been a long time coming for you.
– Phil
Getting Sick of the Olympics? I Know I’m Not.
12 August 2008
Olympics Olympics Olympics.
For people who think it’s all a waste of time, it must be a akin to the Brady Bunch’s Jan Brady hearing Marcia Marcia Marcia all the time.
Sorry, I’m a Marcia guy. She had the talent in that Brady Bunch household (which admittedly is not a high benchmark), and in just the same way, the Olympics is just about the talent of the people competing.
Who can not be freaked out by the talent of those Chinese divers, who jump from a ten metre high platform into a swimming pool without making a splash. I’d have vertigo.
Or the nineteen year olds who race the world’s best in the swimming pool, and somehow manage to ignore the weight of fear and public expectation to break world records. They are nineteen, an age when most of us were worried about pimples or if that girl in the library knows we’re alive.
Sometimes though, it just doesn’t work out. Jessica Schipper, Australian swimming young-un, broke the zip on the back of her costume just before the race, She still came third. Imagine if the zip survived.
Then there is the Australian rowing eights. They were set as favourites for a gold medal, then their pesky rudder broke. They drifted in last.
When you think that it’s all about micro-seconds and micro-movements, you realise what these people are doing. Olympic gold medal-winning shooter Michael Diamond was in a fierce medal battle a couple of days ago in the trap shooting. He would take a shot, then his opponent, then Michael etc etc. This was about firing a gun at a moving target. They hit every time. Until Michael missed. And lost the medal.
There is no quarter given in the Olympics. No second chances. Four years comes down to those microseconds. Pretty cool, eh?
– Phil
After All the Turmoil..
11 August 2008
It’s on at last. After the protests about Tibet, after the bomb threats, after the human rights abuse claims, after the pollution freak-out, the Games are underway.
Stephanie Rice has become our latest superfish, winning gold in the individual 400 metre medley, this woman of 20 who has a personality orf gold and looks to match. She beat the Americans while US president George W. looked on from the stand. There was plenty for him to cheer about though. The fabulous Michael Phelps won the first of what is sure to be a slew of golds (even if the U.S. Anthem was abruptly cut off during the podium ceremony).
The women cyclists almost drowned in flooding rain, with many sliuding off their bikes, including a South Korean who was nudged into a nasty-looking ditch that should have been barricaded off. She got back on her bike, in tears, and returned to chase the field. I don’t know if she was crying at the lost opportunity, or at the pain, but it was a frank moment that made you want to cry with her.
There’s been plenty of reaction from readers of this blog to the Olympics. Some say the Olympics have been a pat on the back for a repressive regime and an an encouragement to big business to take over yet another big event. But others say the Olympics should not be about China, it should be about the athletes.
Yesterday’s swimming proved just that. The fittest young men and women on the planet stood in lines at the starting blocks and took each other on, after four years of repressive hours trainings every day. To get them together at last to face off was a joy to watch.
I cried with Stephanie Rice (Steaming Rice as she was headlined today). I didn’t cry for her recent public split from her Olympian partner. I didn’t cry because she’s beautiful. I cried because this young woman went to Beijing, took on the best in the world, and won. It was pure sport. The fitter, the stronger, the more mentally tough wins. As simple as that. She did it.
It was not the greatest moment in our lives, but it will be a memory, a little joy. Thanks Stephanie.
– Phil
Human Rights. Not for George Bush
8 August 2008
Sometimes international diplomacy is just hilarious.
Out-going US president George W. Bush is in China for the opening of the Beijing Olympics, but on his way to China, he made a stopover in Bangkok and gave a speech in which he expressed his deep concerns about China’s religious freedom and human rights.
China took umbrage at this. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman rebuked the president, not for what he had to say, but for the fact that China considered his statements a form of ‘interference’ in its affairs. In other words, China chided the US President for speaking out.
In the same rebuke the spokesman made a statement that said that China was “dedicated to maintaining and promoting its citizens’ basic rights and freedoms’.
Many people around the world, including the US president, the Australian prime minister and quite a few Tibetans would query this last statement.
The irony comes when you that consider China’s claims of being a promoter of human rights comes in the same statement that is telling the leader of the free world to, effectively, shut up.
I don’t think the irony will be lost on the rest of the world either.
– Phil
Beijing Olympics. One Day to Go. Yep. Still Political.
7 August 2008
You would think that all the anger about Tibet and China’s human rights violations would have settled a bit by now. After all, the Olympics is something that most people in the world have at least a benign interest in. The Tibet point has been made, you might think, and people may well be saying let’s get on with showcasing the greatest sporting carnival in the world.
But no. The Tibet crackdown is still smarting. Only a few hours ago, protestors from Students for a Free Tibet staged a startling protest near the Olympic stadium by climbing up an electricity pole and unfurling two giant banners. The protestors were arrested, and have been ordered to leave the country.
No one said free speech was a cherished commodity in China, but you’ve got to question China’s political nous. Deporting for people for putting up banners only serves to highlight (a) Tibet, and (b) the fact that personal freedom in China is very limited.
If the authorities had given the protestors a talking to and let them go, then that would have made a strong point that maybe China really is as misunderstood as it claims to be.
China’s Organising Committee has done brilliantly with the venues, and tomorrow’s Opening Ceremony promises to be amazing with up to 30,000 actors on the ground in the stadium and the fireworks are going to be spectacular. The ahtletes have been training for four years or more for this. It’s ironic that the people who stand to gain the most from the Games, China’s bosses, appear to be the only ones making questionable decisions. They don’t want these Games to be remembered as a political fiasco like Berlin in 1936, but I fear unless they settle down a bit, that’s exactly what is going to happen. And that would be a shame.
– Phil
