Imagine for a moment that FIFA is the reality TV show Survivor and Sepp Blatter the contestant that’s gone rogue. Delirious from a diet of media bile and the relentless glow of the public spotlight, his words and deeds become increasingly desperate and bizarre. Sitting round the campfire at night, he talks of the World…
Category: Events
World Cup ads: cast your votes
In the lead-up to the World Cup, things go from bad to worse for Brazil’s government. Now it has been hit with a lawsuit for false advertising, with independent federal prosecutors arguing commercials talking up the benefits of the World Cup are “absurdly divorced from reality.” Which simply serves as an excuse for us to…
Brazil’s World Cup countdown hits discordant note
In a game of word association, Brazil conjures many possibilities. Football. Carnival. Party. Colour. Movement. And, of course, music. Brazilian drums and samba beats that get those hips swinging as only Latino hips can. There’s also The Girl from Ipanema. And let’s not forget Peter Allen’s I Go To Rio or Barry Manilow’s Copacabana. Hey,…
Winter Paralympians. Inspiring? More like superhuman
Legend has it that an Aussie medallist at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, asked by a journalist if he’d always wanted to be a Paralympian, responded: “Not when I could @#$%ing walk.” Urban myth or otherwise, it’s a story that highlights not just the dim-wittedness of some journos but the particular challenges Paralympic athletes face before…
How not to hold on to 400,000 followers (…not a problem I’ve had yet)
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…
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 —…
kazblah 