By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 25 May 2012 21:08:20 +0000

Thanks. The Torch relay reveals the potential of the Games as a truly popular-democratic event. Why not allow hundres, thousands to follow the torch bearer walking and running the highways and byways as it criss crosses the country. Yet none of that happens, the crowds kept to the kerbsides, and this is supposed to be an invent to inspire participation! The Olympics combines overblown expectation and cronic lack of ambition. It could have been so much better… which is the theme of my book.

Mark P

By: gerry oates

gerry oates — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:26:22 +0000

I was worried that Kathy Freeman was carrying too much expectation upon her shoulders and have read her accounts of that race showing that she felt all that burden at the time but she won through nevertheless with one of our own athletes joining her on the podium,Katherine Merry.I enjoyed the smile of relief as she crossed the line in third place and this gave me a great deal of pleasure to see her achieve so much.
So the athletes perform and the dark corners of exclusion and discrimination remain.Recall the tennis player Yvonne Goolagong – it was only after her plying career was over that she became aware of her native heritage and from then on se worked hard to bring the benefits of sport to the youth of the aboriginal nation.
Corporate sponsorship seems to be an insidious component of the modern Games.Many big brands hope to make a killing while breathless commentators wish the public to emotionally respond to the travels of the Olympic torch “scarcely one hour’s journey”from everyone in the nation.
I do quiver -because I imagine it going through Essex where six months ago the police violently evicted 83 families from their own land at Dale Farm at a cost which might have built a small sports stadium

Comments on: Race to the Line

By: Mark

By: gerry oates