olympics thought #1 (Sunday August 15th, 2004 - 13:19)

category: mmhuh?

I’ve become some what enamoured with sports other than my gool ol’ favourite Formula 1 recently I assume in an effort to broaden my knowledge but possibly because I’ve been around someone who knows all the rules and explains them to me.

Transfixed by try scoring in the NRL (National Rugby League) and the Tri-Nations Rugby; the (faking of) body language in the world championship of Poker; the start of a new season of English Football (I’m missing watching it occasionally in London pubs); the seriousness of local pool competitions; the flips and jumps of the WRC and ARC (World/Australian Rally Championships); mesmerised by various dollops of golf, cricket and tennis. All of this and more but I still can’t seem to allow myself to focus on AFL (Australian Football Leauge) – odd – and since returning to Sydney I’ve missed my free-to-air snooker!

So despite the recent sport-fix I was actually suprised to be stuck on watching the Athens Olympics yesterday. I tried to think back and realised that I barely followed Sydney 2000 (I blame homesickness as I’d only been in London for a few months), and have little re-collection of Atlanta (I was busy studying my final year of school). I haven’t really paid attention since Barcelona so memories are those of an unobservent 13 year old.

The first little observations of 2004 then are from the Beach Volleyball….

Why can’t the ladies wear better fitting bikini bottoms? Their tight skimpy costumes have little fabric on the backside and bulge their bottoms out so they spend half the time re-adjusting the fabric. Surely that’s very distracting for them during a match and they could just put on something that covers the whole of their bottom and sits comfortably? An added bonus would be that the viewers wouldn’t have to see their dodgy tan lines.

And who picks the music clips that are blasted out in between points? Are these artists being paid appropriate royalties for global airing? The mix of tunes is quite odd comprising amongst others of Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ Come On Eileen, Cher’s It’s in His Kiss (the Shoop Shoop Song), Rolf Harris’ Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport (which is surely an advantage to Australian teams), Rock around the Clock and Let’s Twist Again. What is the point?

Well.. more sport to be watched today including my little Kimi’s attempt to blast his way through the hoards from 10th on the grid in Hungary. Just one win this season Kimi, that’s all I expect of you now.