It’s hard to summarise the sporting life of multi-award-winning journalist Aaron Kearney. Attempts to do so demand more print space than is possible for the average sporting story. Suffice it to say that Kearney has played, watched, reported on, commentated (T.V. and radio), anchored, written about, produced, organized and facilitated more sports and sporting events than most … [Read more...]
Olympic success – the countries that (really) excel… and how Australia doesn’t rate!
Most of us sports-mad Australians like to think that we punch well above our weight when it comes to Olympic competition. Australians, and our media, just love the medal table that we believe shows what a superior sporting nation we are. If the numbers of medals that we win, per capita, are any measure of how well we perform at Olympic sports then we better think again. The … [Read more...]
What is an Adolph?
We all know that Adolph was a nasty bugger from the otherwise lovely city of Munich back in the the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s but what is an Adolph in a modern sporting context? King of "sport and politics" Funnily enough, the nasty Adolph despite his own physical ineptitude does have a number of lasting contributions to sport... some that could be regarded as borderline … [Read more...]
Patriotism… or is it nationalism in Australian sport.
Colin Tatz, Australian National Australians may well love their sport, but why don't we delight in success elsewhere? Sport is here for the moment and gone in a few seconds, minutes, hours or days. AAP/Julian Smith University Patriotism is well and good, but nationalism is something else. It is exaltation of the nation above all, the feeling of superiority over others – … [Read more...]
Sally Pearson shows the Phoenix how the rising from the ashes thing is done! (Part 1)
A few weeks back Socrates had a chat to World Champion hurdler, Sally Pearson, about her last few years as an athlete. What a tale the world's number one had to tell. In Part 1. of Sally's story, Socrates describes Pearson's rise from the ashes despite extraordinary physical and emotional pressures and, just to prove she doesn't mind doing it the hard way, she did it all … [Read more...]