Alexander Broad may not be a household name but he was the biggest thing in Sochi. No, he didn’t win a medal. He didn’t even compete. He didn’t actually set foot in Sochi, or even Russia. But from his Toronto bedroom, dorm, dunny, or wherever it is that 20-year-old college students perform their social media…
Month: February 2014
Farewell from Sochi… but first, let’s rig the medal count
Something’s fishy. A little over a week ago, Russia was in eighth place on the Olympic medal tally. Sure, they bounced around a bit in the standings, hitting second place on a couple of occasions, but never once did they take the outright lead. Then, with less than 24 hours of the competition left, who…
An Olympics volunteer shares a nation’s lament
Hello again, is Vladimir. Has been a while, da? I share you secret. I have intoxicated. I am drunk whole bottle vodka. Twice. Now I have hurt in head from vodka and hurt in heart from ice hockey. All of Russia is like bear with sore head. We can’t believe we lose Olympic ice hockey….
She’s baaaaaaaack
Ten years ago, the unfolding Athens Olympics drama of Jana Pittman’s Knee provided some fantastic sport for these pages (or the emailed missives that preceded them). There were daily knee updates, media pursuits on crutches, odd Greek-inspired fashion statements, Princess Leia side buns, whale music and meditation rituals. Plus a world-class repertoire of blub —…
An open letter to Bruce Brockhoff
Alex Pullin has no idea how he got his nickname Chumpy. Or if he does he ain’t saying. Aussies of a certain age remember an ad for a dog food that was ‘so chumpy you can carve it’. Watching the men’s snowboard cross was a bit like eating said dog food. We had golden expectations…
Silver lining to the Sochi fog
We were strapped into our couches, anticipating our best shot yet at a gold medal. We’d just eaten a dinner with green and gold veggies (sweetcorn and broccoli), donned our favourite Aussie t-shirts (we all did this, right?), turned on the telly and… nuffin. There was a snowboard cross course there somewhere. We just couldn’t…
Aussies set the bar high… everywhere
Almost half a century ago, a bloke called Dick Fosbury came up with a new way of getting over the high jump bar. Today, the Fosbury Flop is the sport’s standard. It may not be the coolest name and it may well have raised a few questions about Dick’s performance in other areas but Fosbury…
It’s all on show at Sochi
A quick word to all the lads in the ski slopestyle. Please, for the love of all things tasteful, pull your pants up. Don’t imagine for a second while you’re doing all your tricks and twirls that we at home have any desire to see your clacker. Or your undies. Especially the grey marle variety….
kazblah 