Winners Are Grinners…….

I had hoped that my rantings in respect of the Olympics were over! Not so it appears.

After maligning the Australian athletes so poorly during the course of the Games – you remember…..terms like failure, letting the country down and disgrace to the green and gold – some parts of the Australian media have turned their attack to Team GB and the successes of the British team.

You will remember the medal tally:

3rd Great Britain:Gold 29; Silver 17; Bronze 19; Total 65

10th Australia: Gold 7; Silver 16; Bronze 12; Total 35

Terms coming out of the media include “UK Waves the Rare Pom Pom”; Team GB stands for “Gloating Bastards”. The shock experienced by Australians they were overtaken by the UK was described as being “seismic”. Australia and therefore Australians, until recent times, have been magnanimous in defeat. They were always the “good sports”.

Now I see this continual “slashing of wrists” and “gnashing of teeth” by the media as Australia could only manage to slink into 10th place in the medal standings, whilst the “old enemy” sailed into 3rd placed with 29 gold medals compared to Australia’s 7.

As I have stated before in this place, the Olympics is not about the medal count, but rather the cream of the world’s athletes getting together every four years, and competing at the world’s premier sporting event. Then to add even more insult to Team GB and the UK in general, I noted this quote in the Daily Telegraph, 15/08/2012:

“Suddenly the Poms excel at sport and being arrested in Europe for drunken debauchery — whereas in Australia not only do wine sales now outstrip beer sales but latest figures reveal that Australians read more books per head of population and attend more cultural events than any other nation on earth. “

So now wine drinking is a measure of culture? Strewth!

The author then goes on to try to explain it this way:

“Pom bashing is merely revenge for centuries of English condescension. In truth, most English people see we antipodeans as recessive — the Irish of the Pacific. “

The bottom line here is that Team GB not only performed, they performed extremely well! They finished third after the USA and China, and that in itself is a magnificent effort. All that is left now is for the Australian media to try to denigrate this fine effort with a stroke of the quill and a drop of vitriol!

Let’s all look forward to the Rio De Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, and hope that Australian media ideals will improve – I suspect not!