great aussie olympic moments

[Ken Gargett]

a few thoughts.

hard to see anyone ever matching phelps but dawn fraser was the first person to win three golds in a row and undoubtedly would have won at least a 4th (so impressive for a 100 m sprint) had she not been banned for a long period for apparently pinching a flag from the japanese palace. if you doubt that, i believe that, despite having been kicked out of the sport and not training, someone got her into a pool at the time to time her doing 100m. it was, even without competition, faster than the gold medal winning time.

cathy freeman's win certainly the most hyped. moved an entire nation.

norman surely our greatest sprinter. no one was expected to challenge the americans and he split them. and then stood with them on the dias during their protest and continued to support them for decades. i think that americans think far more highly of him than we do.

perkins, our greatest long distance swimmer - possibly the greatest of all time. ruled the pool for a long time but coming to atlanta was badly out of form. qualified by a fraction of a smidge and not given a chance of getting anywhere - daniel kowalski, another qlder, was favourite. perkins qualified for the final (remember that this is an event that takes around fifteen minutes) by the narrowest of margins - 0.24 seconds. he was out in lane 8 and given no chance. had not had a decent swim in about two years. and he blew everyone out of the water in one of the bravest, most courageous efforts in history. goosebumps for a month.

and finally, 'doing a bradbury'. non-aussies have probably never heard of this guy. our first ever winter gold medal. i recall the commentary - fantastic effort, can't finish worse than fifth (there were only 5 in the final). he was literally last the entire race. an american - ono, i think, had won a heap of golds and was unbackable favourite. bradbury just got further and further behind. then, in the last 15 metres, it looks like the korean tries to cut off ono but stumbles and they all go down. all four. bradbury so far behind that he can avoid it. sails through for the gold. he led for approximately a second. ono scrambles over for silver and the canadian jumps over the korean for bronze. what a lot of people do not recall is that this was exactly how he made the final - same thing happened in the semi. otherwise, he'd not got past the heats. and then it emerged, his manager/father always had this as the plan. a hail mary but he knew his son could never win it on speed alone. so hang in and cross your fingers. GOLD!!

every one of them deserves a cigar!

 

[Ken Gargett]

sorry - ignore this till rob's site behaves.

which it is finally doing.

[Fuzz AI]

Alisa Camplin winning the 2002 Winter Olympics Freestyle Skiing Women's Aerials on fractured ankles.

[Ken Gargett]

41 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

Alisa Camplin winning the 2002 Winter Olympics Freestyle Skiing Women's Aerials on fractured ankles.

fair enough but i forgot to put "other".

[JohnS]

I voted for Dawn Fraser's effort as it was groundbreaking, yes, she was the first to win three in a row. Kieran Perkins' effort came a close second for me.

 

[Ken Gargett]

23 minutes ago, JohnS said:

I voted for Dawn Fraser's effort as it was groundbreaking, yes, she was the first to win three in a row. Kieran Perkins' effort came a close second for me.

 

john, i went for perkins because the enormity of the event, the way he had scraped through by the proverbial skin of his teeth at every stage and then in the final pulls out a swim for the ages, it was something magic.