Olympic Expectations

I grew up in the 1980s. In Los Angeles in 1984, the Australian team won 4 gold medals; one in the pool, one at the velodrome, one at the weightlifting, and one at the athletics. Not that can I remember seeing any of it.

In 1988 in Seoul, we won three: Women's Hockey, the women's 400m hurdles, and the men's 200m freestyle.

We started to really improve in Barcelona, through Atlanta, all the way to Sydney where we won 16 gold. Actually we won more gold in Athens four years later, with 17 1st place finishes.

Now there is a national crisis happening because we may win less than 15 gold medals, and fall from the top five nations on the medal tally. Is this a proportional response?

Of course not. We are a nation of, mostly sport mad, I admit, 22 million people. Great Britain has 70 million people and a budget for Olympic sports boosted by lottery revenue. They outspend us by something like 4-1.

Polling has indicated that while Australians would like to see us higher on the medal tally, they don't think government funding is the ethical way to go about it.

It doesn't really reflect on us as a nation if we fall a few spaces on the medal tally. "Crazy" Sally McLelland has shown the world that most Aussies are over in Beijing in the right spirit.

So why is the media, and John Coates, making such a big deal about this? While I couldn't trust Coates, Gosper and the other bloke as far as I could throw them, the media is sure making a lot of noise about this. Those shining beacons of highbrow-ness at Sunrise have even adjusted the medal count to take into account population, or spending, or something, just to shoot us up to second on the medal tally behind New Zealand. Maybe it's medals per sheep.

We need to be looking at the smaller picture, if anything. Let's celebrate the individual achievements of Stephanie Rice and Libby Trickett, and the team efforts of the softballers and the hockey team.

We also need to keep things in perspective. Firstly, we need to keep in our minds that the Olympics is just a brilliant distraction from daily life. And secondly, we need to keep in mind our current place in the world, and what we have to offer. Maybe then, everyone can realise what these achievements in Beijing are really worth.