By Phil Jarratt
MY Facebook page keeps reminding me that exactly four years ago I was deeply involved in the London Olympics, working ridiculous hours at the broadcast centre for Foxtel, grabbing a stadium ticket whenever it was offered and whenever I could fit it in between shifts.
It was in this capacity that I was only a few rows back, watching Oscar Pistorius’s heroic relay leg, tears streaming down my face as the crowd erupted at the power of human will as those blades took him down the straight at full speed.
Well, we all saw how that worked out. Hero to zero inside 12 months.
It’s not often that an Olympic hero turns into a cold-blooded murderer, but it is quite normal for them to chalk up a few blemishes before they go, whether it’s stealing a flag (naughty Dawnie), doctoring passes to get into events or getting plastered and staying up all night.
We tend to forgive them their trespasses pretty quickly, particularly when there’s a swag of gold involved, but I’m not so sure the Rio mob earned the right to behave like idiots.
However, let he who has never been a drunken fool cast the first stone.
I managed to miss most of these Games, having slipped into a wonderfully primitive zone of virtually no communications, but arrived home in time for the usual end of Games gnashing of teeth and calls for royal commissions into the uselessness and bad attitude of our athletes, etc etc.
But it’s all a furphy.
With the exception of Beijing, where we had a medal feast, our tally in Rio is pretty much where it always is, and as far as the attitude and behavioural issues are concerned, the swim team was under the gun in London just as much, and the critics and commentators have been going off half-cocked about this stuff ever since Our Dawnie nicked the flag in Tokyo more than half a century ago.
And speaking of Tokyo, only 1460 days to go before surfing becomes an Olympic sport and John John Florence and Gabriel Medina go for the gold in a Kelly Slater Wave Pool. Can’t wait.
Great performances at the Oz Titles
A couple of weeks back I wrote about the great efforts of young Nic Brewer and the amazing resurgence of the elderly Josh Constable at the recent national titles in Coffs Harbour, another event I managed to miss most of.
I predicted Josh would take out the over-35s codgers’ event, which he did comprehensively, but also it should be noted that overall local surfers, particularly from the Noosa Malibu Club, put on a great showing.
And Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing’s long-time contest director Alan Atkins romped home from a classy field in the over-65s, giving him another trophy for a very crowded mantelpiece at Suffolk Park.
Life in the old dog yet, and he’s got 30 years on Josh!
Many years ago in Cornwall
I’m writing a surfing memoir at the moment and put out the call a while back for any friends with interesting photos from my sordid past to dig them out.
It took a while, but my Basque photographer friend Claude Etchelecou found this nasty little gem in his files.
It looks like the inaugural inter-club comp of the Gay Surfers Association, but in fact it’s former pro surfer Jeff Hakman and your humble correspondent getting matey after a surf at Watergate Bay, Cornwall, in August 1997.
There is an explanation for this, of course, but I can’t recall exactly what it was.
I know we’d been on the road promoting our book, Mr Sunset, throughout Europe and the UK, so we were probably a little tired and emotional. Let’s just say that Jeff had loaned me his ear plugs and I was returning them. Or something.
Thanks for sharing, Claude, mon pot, but I doubt this is going to make the final cut for the book. Although stranger things have happened, as will be revealed on publication day.
