London 2012: Day 8 & 9

Seems the Olympics roll on and if you are busy like me doing other things then you miss quite a bit. One thing you don;t miss though is the coverage, countless footage of hosts and replay after replay of action while they wait for things to happen before showing them. Surely if the AOC is going to look into anything it shouldn't be the effort of our athletes and the gold medal tally but rather the inept way in which the Olympics is being showcased by a media organisation that is way out of it's depth and not in touch with what the viewers want. Just take last night for example where viewers were subjected to more than 2 hours of Eddie McGuire dribbling on about anything he could find printed in reports and giving as much emotion, care & heart to the information as Monty Burns does.

This morning saw what could be one of the greatest feats in Olympic's history when Usain Bolt won back to back 100m sprints. Although Carl Lewis won back to back, he wasn't the first across the line in the infamous 1988 Seoul Olympics. All the hype for this race eventuated and Bolt never looked like being headed to show why he is the premier athlete on the track in winning the fastest 100m final in history.  What was disappointing was the thought process that led to a fool in the crowd to throw a bottle on the track just before the race. Whilst it didn't affect anything, the picture clearly shows how dangerous this could ahve been.  Also questions should be raised about spectators having glass bottles. But maybe it was aimed at USA sprinter Justin Gatlin as a protest to a previously banned drug user being allowed to ever compete again.

But attention needs to be thrown at the media who only want to see gold. When you have reporters walking up to our athletes and being very critical and negative it is a shame to say they are Australian. I encourage everyone to go onto Channel 9's face book page and review all the comments being posted. There is a large public outcry against this station.

From 1996 onwards Australia has enjoyed very successful Olympics. When you consider that in 2000 Australia hosted the Olympics and a large amount of money was pumped into our athletic programs to ensure a good home result and adding to that what effect a home Olympics has, there was never any doubt that it wouldn't last forever. This Olympics isn't over yet either and plenty more medals will be won. Maybe this is the wake up call our country needs to get our kids more active in sport and try and identify kids that can compete in the real athletic arena rather than the virtual one on our screens.  Is Australia'a decline in sport proportionate to our rising obesity and declining political willingness to get our country fit?