First among unequals
I’d be interested in hearing from representatives of the British, Canadian, and South African contingents as to their reaction to the Commonwealth Games, currently being held in Manchester. In sport-obsessed Australia, the news media have gone into overdrive as they hype the astonishing achievements of Australian athletes, who now lead the medal tally by an unassailable margin.
I don’t see myself as an anti-sport curmudgeon—regular visitors will recall my enthusiasm about the recent World Cup—but Australia’s performance at the Commonwealth games reminds me of nothing so much as the Seinfeld episode, The Foundation, in which Kramer becomes a karate champion by enrolling in a class for nine year olds. “We’re all at the same skill level, Jerry…” he explained.
<edited>Stuart Langridge wrote in a P-to-P email:
On the medal-winning point, I must confess to some rather jingoistic anger at your comments about Kramer from Seinfeld doing karate against nine-year-olds. Australia isn’t *that* far ahead! Yes, unassailable medal count. Yes, you did better than anyone else. But not all television propaganda is necessarily true; you came in with a total of 109 medals and we got 85, which is not that big a margin. Moreover, the only parts I really watched were the track athletics and I barely saw an Australian representative; your country is, I concede, very strong in field sports though.
Stuart’s response made me realize that my Kramer reference was (unintentionally) ambiguous. I’d meant to criticize Australian jingoism, not the sporting ability of the other countries competing at the games. I commented because I felt there was something unseemly about Australia’s making such a big fuss over being the big fish in a rather small pond (apart from swimming, if you’ll excuse a rather poor joke).</edited>
Two words : winter sports.
Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken on 31 July 2002 at 11:01 PM