Watching the women’s ski slopestyle final yesterday, Ice Age’s hapless sabre-toothed squirrel Scrat and his all too fleeting embraces with his precious acorn came to mind. For 30 tantalising minutes, we had a bronze medal in our fingertips. Or at least Anna Segal did. And then a Canadian took it off her. Ski slopestyle is…
Author: kazblah
Crashes a-go-go at Sochi
The Winter Olympics has always been a bit of a poor relation to its older summer sibling. Fewer athletes, too many clothes. But if there’s one area where the Winter Games come into their own, it’s in the element of danger. Downhill skiers descend mountains faster than the highway speed limit. The lugeys go just…
Sochi: Aussie hopes on ice… for now
OK, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. If there is one weakness in the Australian sports physiology, it is in the pursuits involving ice and snow. It’s not our fault. We are, after all, bronzed Aussies. We love a sunburnt country. Drought and bushfire are the natural ravages of our land. Our minds…
An Olympics volunteer welcomes you to Sochi
Privet. My name Vladimir, like man I love in totally non-sexual way. Welcome to Sochi, one of warmest cities in Russia. Is perfect place for Winter Olympics, da? Please to put on your sunblock. Some people say not nice things about Sochi. My job to tell truth, put record straight. The thing about buildings not…
The Ashes: God save our Mo
There are so many ways we could begin today’s entry. Whitewash would be a good word to start with. Annihilation. Massacre. Humiliation. Thrashing. These are all excellent words and certainly apt for the occasion. Perhaps we could take a lead from the Barmy Army and break into song, with something subtle like ‘five-nil’ repeated over…
The Ashes: The sweetest victory of all
In one of the more celebrated moments in Australian political history, Opposition Leader John Hewson innocuously asked Prime Minister Paul Keating why he wouldn’t call an early election. Keating fairly salivated before answering: “Because I want to do you slowly.” Above the ensuing hilarity, he continued: “There has to be a bit of sport in…
The Ashes: We’ve urned it
Another Ashes Test, another easy win for Australia. This could get boring if our favourite national pastime wasn’t making Poms suffer. The drubbing has been so emphatic that a colleague not generally known for her tolerance of Englishmen on the sporting field admitted midway through day four to feeling strange pangs of sympathy for our…
The Ashes: Do you smell something burning?
The thwack of bat on ball, the cries of ‘howizzeeeeeeee’, the soporific lull of the commentary. These are all sounds which, like the cicada’s never-ending mating call, have heralded Aussie summers of old. At some point in the last few years though, when thwack became the sound of Aussie wickets falling or our bowlers being…
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