Why is beach volleyball an Olympic sport? How many people in the world play it competitively?
Likewise synchronised swimming.
Softball has been dismissed as an Olympic sport and rugby can’t get in, yet these Mickey Mouse sports continue at the games.
Let’s make blogging an Olympic sport. More people do it than beach volleyball.
The population of Victoria is five million people, but I was the only one of them today on the summit of our second-highest peak, Mt Feathertop.
The mountain was awe inspiring, humbling, powerful and beautiful in a mesmerising package of contradictions.
Normally I have Friday spare to pursue private business, but I swapped it for today to [...]
I saw a disturbing report on SBS news last night about the Aral Sea disaster in Kazakhstan. The world’s fourth-largest inland sea has been decimated by commercial exploitation and mismanagement. Here are some of the facts:
Forty years ago the Aral Sea surface was 66,100 square kilometers with an average depth of 16.1 metres and a [...]
Well it’s almost sunk in that I’m a Dad again. The twins were dragged reluctantly into the world at 10.26am and 10.27am on Tuesday, December 16, 2003 almost two weeks before Juliet would have been full term in her labor.
The vital details:
James Peter, weight 6lb 12oz
Margaret Johanna, weight 6lb
Mum and babies are doing well. Hopefully [...]
I wrote this article in February 2002 in response to a campaign by Senator Julian McGauran and Tim Fischer to obtain a pardon for English officer “Breaker” Morant, who ordered the killing of prisoners in the Anglo/South African War.
I was annoyed that McGauran took up this issue without any community consultation. It was the only [...]
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Beach volleyball is the only thing I’ve seen. Both men and women.
I don’t seek it out — it’s what’s been on when I’ve been out someplace.
It is an odd one though.
August 18th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
And they’ve pushed out softball for the next Olympics! I wonder what will take its place.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:42 pm
While I am not generally a sports fan, I used to enjoy watching the Olympics. But now, with women’s beach volleyball on every night it seems, I give up. Surely the IOC was composed of a bunch of dirty old men when they accepted Beach Volleyball into the fold. Sure, there is the men’s version, but that is a thin coverup for what’s really going on here. As always, marketing sports with sex. I’m not such a huge feminist, but gimme a break, it is so transparent. And the big name professional basketball players in the Olympics? I don’t get that either. I’ll stick to movie reruns or read a good book instead.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Yes Faith, the more I think about it the more convinced I become it’s an absolute joke. Any beach game is something you do for fun, it shouldn’t be at the Olympics.