SHAUN MICALLEF'S ONLINE WORLD AROUND HIM                                  Back       Home
	Hooked on classics Author: Shaun Micallef  Date: 12/09/1999 Words: 854 Publication: Sun Herald Section: Sunday Life Page: 18 For the Sydney Games to be a success, they'll need something for people to remember them by - and synchronised diving ain't it, says Shaun Micallef. If I ran the Games, they would represent something of a nostalgic return to the basics. The marathon, for example, would be as it was in the halcyon days of 490 BC; an open-ended, several-day, naked run from Marathon to Athens, with the winner being the one who dropped dead after crossing the finishing line. People have forgotten the old values, I fear. We no longer live in the age of the steam engine and straw hat and this, I think, in itself, is a great pity. Who remembers the Antwerp Games of 1920? No one. And why? Well, I'm not sure entirely but I'll lay even money it had lot to do with the lack of a hook. A hook is that certain something. A "gimmick", if you will, that makes the particular Olympics in question a talking point for years to come. Berlin had Adolf Hitler, Munich had its indiscriminate shootings, Moscow rounded up its homeless and sent them off to a Gulag - all wonderful hooks to create media interest and get the crowds cheering before the athletes even enter the stadium. What have we got? Men dressed as kangaroos riding around on bikes. I don't mind the cliche. It's not even that the deception is so transparent (the men are clearly discernible under the costumes). It's that the idea is a direct lift from the opening of the Helsinki Games in 1962, except that, over there, they used reindeer. And they weren't riding bikes, they were grazing in a field over a hundred miles away. Very subtle. You've really got to give it to those Dutch, they sure know how to sow a man into a reindeer skin. Still, I digress. I've managed to jot down some great hooks that I think Kevan Gosper and his ilk would be well-advised to use in order to turn this turkey they've got lined up for the world next year into something we can all be proud of. Or at least slightly less embarrassed about. I faxed these suggestions off to Gosper weeks ago but, of course, have not received even the courtesy of an abusive phone call: The enabled Olympics These are to be held immediately after the Paralympics. All those athletes disqualified from participating in the regular Olympics because of drug use get to compete. In fact, use of performance-enhancing drugs would be compulsory. If random testing reveals a normal urine sample from anyone, then the non-offending athlete is to be held down by officials and injected with anabolic steroids until he/she starts to whinny. Limited-area track events Let me explain. Very often, with sprinting at the elite level, there is very little between the athletes who get into the finals. They are all within several fractions of a second of each other. Why not just run these races over the .039 of a second or whatever it is separating the top three runners? Whoever ends up covering the most distance over the .039 of a second is the winner and the track need only be one or two inches long. This will allow more room for either stadium seating or Channel 7 camera equipment. No dumb sports Get rid of synchronised diving. I'm sorry, I know a lot of people like it and I don't mean to be unkind but it's a stupid sport and so are the people who enjoy it. And when I say "stupid", I don't mean that pejoratively. In fact, I don't think I even mean "pejoratively". Don't get me wrong - I like diving. I understand why diving is a sport. It involves a particular grace and beauty, as well as expert skill. Those who remember Greg Louganis effortlessly cracking his head open on the diving board will know what I mean. Well done. But I don't see what additional skill is involved in synchronised diving. I mean we all fall at the same rate - 32 feet per second. You could throw a stove off the diving board and it would hit the water at the same time. I suppose synchronised diving fans might argue that my logic is flawed because a stove can't endorse products in an advertising campaign afterwards. And we all know how commercialised the Games have become. But then again, we mustn't forget that a stove is a product. In fact, there's no limit to the number of quality products that can be pushed into a swimming pool from a great height. Saatchi and Saatchi could make millions from an idea like this. And no doubt will. No dumb hosts Get rid of Gary Wilkinson. This is just a general observation but it would also help improve the Games immeasurably. These are just some "hooks" that I believe will make the Sydney Olympics the world-class event it deserves to be. Come on, Gosper, put your money where your mouth is. Immediately under your nose.