Saturday 11^th August

When Pete and I were having a long-ish stay at the Middle Harbour Yacht club two years ago, getting things fixed on 2XS, we met a nice young bloke called Malcolm, who works at the club.  We needed to get to Manly with backpacks full of goodness knows what one day.  (Goodness knows what because I have forgotten…but it was a big load of heavy something or another which meant that we couldn’t carry our packs very far.) Malcolm offered to give us a ride.  He was driving a very long rig, full of sailing hulls.  He works very hard, 40 hours or so per week.  He told us he was going to try for the Olympics in London, but that he didn’t rate his chances very highly.  He said it would be very hard for any Australian teams to excel, because all of the sailors here work full time in real jobs, while the Great Britain teams were able to train full time on very generous salaries from the government.  He told us that the GB government were going all out to win as many medals as possible by throwing enormous amounts of cash at their athletes.

We said golly and gosh, and how unfair, and when we clambered out of the rig, we very fervently wished him all the best and said we would follow his progress.  And what magnificent progress!  In fact Australia has starred in the sailing, in spite of the disadvantages.  I have just copied this off a news site:

Overnight in London Malcolm Page, along with his partner Matthew Belcher, took out gold in the 470 class event.

He won a gold medal for the same event in Beijing.

In the race known as the 'Ashes on water', Belcher and Page had a weak start, but eventually finished ahead of Great Britain.

Malcolm Page is now the first Australian sailor to win gold at consecutive Olympics.

Malcolm Page congratulations, you're officially the best in the world now at what you do.  Just like Usain Bolt you can probably legitimately call yourself a legend.

Malcolm isn’t our only Olympic friend.  Just before the last Olympics, we were at Brisbane airport, in a big lift.  There were two nice people in there, with a great big cardboard package.  I said, “Goodness what do you have in there?  A piano?”  They laughed and said no, they had a bike.  Pete eyed their calf muscles speculatively and said, “You wouldn’t perchance be going to Beijing, would you?”  And yes indeed; we were talking to Emma Moffatt and her boyfriend – also a triathlete, but not, he said, up to her standard.  We followed Emma’s progress with great interest and she got a bronze medal; another Australian Emma (Snowsill) got gold and somebody else from somewhere else got silver.  We were all thrilled and ready to watch her again this time but…poor Emma fell off her bike in the second leg of the triathlon and limped off not to be seen again.

So as you see…the Olympics are all about me me me!!!