Will we beat the Aussies?

[JTG]

Australian swimming has gone into relative decline since Sydney - not one single men's gold, though the women still managed six. The track cycling team don't seem to be anywhere near the standard they have been either, even if you ignore the improvement in the GB team.

Anywhere else where they seem curiously lacking?

 

[ScallyWag II]

They've not done all that much in the rowing.

Mind you, neither have the Italians, conspicuously absent from medaling in these olympics

 

[twistedAM]

We gave them a good fucking in the cycling and that's all I really care about.

Cycling golds:
Britain - I've lost count
Spain 2
Switzerland 1
USA 1
Australia 0

 

[twistedAM]

Australia have their first medal in the cycling. It's a silver.
Guess who got gold?

 

[Barking_Mad]

Australian swimming has gone into relative decline since Sydney - not one single men's gold, though the women still managed six. The track cycling team don't seem to be anywhere near the standard they have been either, even if you ignore the improvement in the GB team.

Anywhere else where they seem curiously lacking?

Pots of money always helps. UK Cycling has had £20m of lottery funding to spend. That's currently £2.85m per gold medal.

 

[marty21]

15 -11

 

[London_Calling]

It's actually the Australian men who are letting the side down - their women are doing better than GBs.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

I'm not much up on the cycling, but I just read this:

The British have taken over as the dominant nation on spokes, much of that due to the man in charge of the team, Australian Shane Sutton, a knockabout bloke from the NSW bush.


Sutton, who's being paid pound £1 million ($2.1 million) to take over British cycling for this Olympic cycle - vastly more money than Australia could have paid - said he felt for Australia after watching them suffer in Beijing.
"I do feel for them," he said. "Everyone's making a lot of this Aussie-Pom thing and the fact that I'm an Aussie coaching the Poms, but it's not like that.


"Green and gold run through my blood but, at the end of the day, I've got my job to do."


Sutton, who will quit on a high as Britain's coach after today, but stay on in another senior role, said the sport tended to go in cycles and now it was Britain's turn at the top.

Ryan Bayley, the Athens sprint champion who had a disappointing competition in Beijing, bemoaned the lack of funding in Australian cycling.
"We Australians have got a lot of heart," Bayley said. "But we don't have the funding of the British.


"They have the Australian sports scientist who was ours (Grant White), they've got a German sprint coach who was one of the most tactical riders ever (Jan van Eiden).


"Basically they can buy whatever they want whenever they want."

Would you consider that sour grapes or do you think Ryan Bayley's making a fair point?

and who trains the Ethiopians and other poorer nations?

 

[Flashman]

Whinging Aussies.

I love it.

 

[jiggajagga]

Lets not forget we have a pop of around 60 million and the Aussies 21 million shall we?

We should beat them all the time according to that criteria!!

 

[London_Calling]

Would you consider that sour grapes or do you think Ryan Bayley's making a fair point?

GB is only doing what every host country does, inclding the Australians before the Sydney Games in 2000; you throw money at it - you can't just host the Games, you have to win medals.

The notion of an Aussie whinging about national funding for sport . . . comedy gold.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Ive been to the Aussie Institute of Sport, and it's very impressive and was way ahead of anywhere in this country for knocking on 20 years or so.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Lets not forget we have a pop of around 60 million and the Aussies 21 million shall we?

We should beat them all the time according to that criteria!!

Yeah, but they have more space to practice in

and they're used to hot weather

 

[Melinda]

We were listening to a report on the Australian reaction to our success on Today this morning.
We had a smug little mwahahaha to ourselves listening to the vox pops of Aussies of all ages being nicely 'shocked, worried and embarrassed.'

 

[TrippyLondoner]

GB is only doing what every host country does, inclding the Australians before the Sydney Games in 2000; you throw money at it - you can't just host the Games, you have to win medals.

The notion of an Aussie whinging about national funding for sport . . . comedy gold.

Gotta agree here. Makes me laugh.

 

[London_Calling]

Poms are winning, call an inquiry - from that bastion of taste and class, The Sydney Morning Herald.

Amusing stuff.

 

[Melinda]

Poms are winning, call an inquiry - from that bastion of taste and class, The Sydney Morning Herald.

Amusing stuff.

Ha!

SOMETHING utterly jaw-dropping has happened at these Games, and it has nothing to do with a tall man with the weight a nation on his shoulders stumbling before the first hurdle.

The Brits have overtaken Australia on the medals table. This darkness has descended, and yet there has been no declaration of national emergency.

Once, not so long ago, Australians were a proud people who walked tall with jutted jaws. The Poms were a source of amusement, a fallen imperial master weeping over a dog-eared scrapbook, its tattered images of Steve Redgrave, Seb Coe, Mary Rand and those blokes from Chariots Of Fire fading by the day.

As much as it hurt, you'd hear them say: "Why can't we be good at sport, like you Aussies?"

Triumphal, you'd smile, pat their bowed heads, and offer an almost heartfelt, "There, there, at least you've got Amy Winehouse."

 

[aylee]

Starting to look like we will at least finish with more gold medals than the Aussies.

Good.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

What really hurts is the knowledge that, when they were down on their scabby knees pleading for any sporting morsel to be thrown their way, we came to their rescue.


Here you go, poor Poms, have our coaches, our programs, our secrets to success.

The airings of Land Of Hope And Glory and wall-to-wall Union Jacks have made Laoshan Velodrome feel like the set for an episode of The Goodies this week.
And in one of the director's chairs, guiding Great Britain's all-conquering sprinters, is Shane Sutton.


A gold medallist for Australia at the 1978 Commonwealth Games, Sutton cut his coaching teeth in Wales and is now firmly ensconced in Team GB, saying "we" and "our" with an ease that belies an accent that is still more Bankstown than Blackpool.

Someone like Steve Waugh, an athlete liaison officer with the Australian team who must surely have watched the Old Enemy's successes this week with the demeanour he perfected while chewing gum at silly mid-off.
So, what are we going to do, Tugger?


"Mate, I know it's not going to help your story, but I'm just here to see good sport," Waugh said yesterday. "They've prepared really well, put a lot of money and effort in.


"I want to see Australia win, and I certainly don't like being beaten by the Poms, but there's no sour grapes."

Anyway, let's not get too smug. Every time this country gets smug, it falls on its face

 

[JTG]

Pots of money always helps. UK Cycling has had £20m of lottery funding to spend. That's currently £2.85m per gold medal.

I'm not talking about the rise of British cycling, I'm talking about the decline of the Australian team. Even ignoring GB's rise, the Aussies have gone backwards

 

[TrippyLondoner]

Poms are winning, call an inquiry - from that bastion of taste and class, The Sydney Morning Herald.

Amusing stuff.

Yes, how dare we EVER be good at sport!

 

[Melinda]

Pots of money always helps. UK Cycling has had £20m of lottery funding to spend. That's currently £2.85m per gold medal.

Jesus! Do you do owt but moan?! Good grief man.

Seriously, why the fuck do some Brits see doom in everythng?

 

[TrippyLondoner]

Jesus! Do you do owt but moan?! Good grief man.

Seriously, why the fuck do some Brits see doom in everythng?

Fuck knows, their loss if they can't enjoy it. Not our problem.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

Are there any Australian forums that anybody knows of that we can crash and gloat?

 

[Homeless Mal]

NO BLOODY WAY

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Are there any Australian forums that anybody knows of that we can crash and gloat?

Could try this one

http://www.topix.com/forum/world/australia

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

or this

http://www.australiaforum.com/issues-current-events/

 

[London_Calling]

Same bloke's at it again - he is quite amusing though:

Okay, all that stuff I said about just doing your best and being proud of even getting to the Olympics. Fuggedabouddit.

This is serious. The Poms are back.


I don't know what happened, where they've been, what's going on here, but every time I check the medal tally there they are, hanging around like a fart in a telephone booth.

I thought these guys gave up on sport back in the 1980s. Didn't Margaret Thatcher sell off all their school ovals to some Euro-Arab investment house to build gas processing plants and car parks or something? Aren't there more pools in Mt Isa than the whole of the United Kingdom? Come on, help me out here. Frankly I don't care where we sit on the tally as long as it's somewhere in front of those gappy toothed sock and sandal wearing bastards.

They've pinched our coaches, our training methods and now, apparently, our rather embarrassing national neediness psychosis where the whole country's sense of self worth is based almost entirely on the fortunes of a handful of athletes. Especially if they're beating us.

I know it must be galling to the rest of the world to have their global sports carnival reduced to the status of a post colonial grudge match between two of the lesser English speaking powers, but let's face it, that is what the Olympics are all about now.

Sorry China, you wasted those billions you just spent. America? Don't worry about your national decline. It's irrelevant.

Tunisia, Togo, Oingo Boingo, whatever. Nice work in whatever it was you won. But let's just remember you're all a support act.

This gig is now all about convicts and jailers settling some old scores in London in four years' time.

I do enjoy the banter and rivalry

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

This gig is now all about convicts and jailers settling some old scores in London in four years' time.

 

[TrippyLondoner]

lol@the last bit