Italy go home!

Italy are out of the World Cup in the first round! All the cheating and diving antics those dodgy bastards could muster simply wasn't enough this year. I'm just sorry I didn't watch live the match where Slovakia put the final nail in their coffin. Hooray!

Alfie Langer's drink-drive charge: Broncos' PR self-pwning

It was only a few hours ago that I read what I took to be a patently false piece of PR from the Brisbane Broncos published on the Courier Mail website following news of Brisbane Broncos rugby league player Allan 'Alfie' Langer being stood down following a drink driving charge.

The Brisbane Broncos will review rugby league legend Allan Langer's future at the club after he was charged with drink driving with an alleged blood alcohol level three times over the limit early today.

Police stopped Langer for a random breath test on South Pine Road at Everton Park, in Brisbane's north, around 1.40am on Monday, several hours after the Broncos' 48-16 loss to the Warriors.

[...]

The players didn't go drinking after Sunday's big loss.

It's believed Langer had dinner with his family after the game and was driving home to the Sunshine Coast where he lives at Pelican Waters when he was stopped for a random breath test.

As I said to Gam at the time, there were a number of holes in this lovely family-friendly scenario.

=================================

1. Langer was pulled over at 1:40am. Rather late to be finishing dinner with one's family, no?

2. He was presumably pulled over as the sole vehicle occupant (either that or he was drink-driving with his family in the car!). Why would he be heading home alone after a family dinner?

3. Whose family would let them drive home after having drinks with dinner?

===============================

Not long afterwards, while watching news on the TV, we saw video of this:

Oh yes! Unfortunately it's not on YouTube yet... talk about having a piece of PR spin unravel at lightning speed!

An (Australian) Open letter to Channel Seven

Dear Channel Seven,

Why do you offer me 'live scores' for the Australian Open tennis on your shitty, shitty website when you refuse to screen the match live in Brisbane? If I want live scores, I'll go to the Australian Open website. From you, the chosen broadcaster, the television station, I want live broadcasting. Why would I watch your crappy, uninformative tabloid news followed by Today Tonight with its squabbling bogans and 'miracle' plastic surgery spruikers when I know that in Melbourne, the tennis is already underway? I'm missing a fantastic 5-setter between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Nicholas Almagro because you guys think your shitty flagship programs are more important than the Southern hemisphere's only grand slam.

Screw you guys,

Sarah

And if one of the pictures of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga that came up in a Google image search happened to depict him with his shirt half-off, why wouldn't I choose it?... Rowrrr

Miranda Devine's Rugby Screed

What's everyone looking at? It's not like you haven't seen me disgrace myself before!

Much to my misfortune, every now and then I'll click on an item in a 'top 5' or 'top 10' most read articles list on the SMH website and be directed to a Miranda Devine screed. I've said before that I have a policy of not clicking through to her articles because I do not wish to contribute to her ongoing employment (as Gam said "Fairfax has been firing journalists, but they keep Miranda Devine?!"). In truth, I should have realised from the incredibly stupid headline for the article that Devine (or one of her equally stupid Opinion contributers, Paul Sheehan or Gerard Henderson) would be responsible for the article. "Natural men scolded into timidity", FFS. What was I thinking?

In the article, Devine claims that the recent spate of coverage of the behaviour of some Rugby League players amounts to an attack on men in general. A claim so mind-bogglingly baseless and stupid it's barely worth raising the obvious fact that, perhaps with the exception of some tiny, extremist-feminist enclave of a website somewhere (to which I would give the same credence as a Miranda Devine article, and be even less likely to read), absolutely no-one, not a single commentator in the media or elsewhere, has turned this incident into a criticism of the behaviour of all men. Except Miranda Devine, oddly enough, who invented the idea that someone everyone had.

The 'War Against Masculinity', Devine calls it, is currently underway. A war in which men are forced into acting like women (by a powerful army of women who refuse to act like women, apparently). The last remaining bastions of true masculinity are sports in which guys like to biff each other. Mind you, apart from pissing against the walls of hotels (hotels that contain bathrooms), Willie Mason-style and biffing each other, Devine provides scant detail of what actually constitutes 'traditional maleness'.

Although it is, apparently, not necessary to have a hairy chest. Which is just as well, since Miranda's writing implies a preference for the smooth, hairless kind.

Perennial dickhead Willie Mason's latest escapade- peeing in the street outside a hotel- is defended for its 'discreet' nature, and the fact that he is held up as an example of one of the many things wrong with the behaviour of NRL players is just a disgrace. A disgrace! Devine castigates Mason's 'mistreatment', under which he was handed an unimaginably harsh sentence by his club... a $2000 fine. Pissing against hotel walls, while (unjustifiably!) against the law, is merely a way by which a real man expresses his masculinity. Deriding or condemning such behaviour, therefore, is clearly a condemnation of every person with a Y-chromosome who hasn't yet been castrated by the maurauding feminist army. A word of advice to homeless guys, Indigenous men and anyone of Lebanese ethnicity: Miranda probably won't be so quick to defend any of you if you're caught doing the same. Indeed, if you happen to splash her shoes as she's leaving a hotel you'll probably find the next day that she's written a column about how you and everyone like you is some kind of scourge on society. At least make sure you're wearing a nice suit and you might get off more lightly.

Devine compares poor Willie Mason's plight with that of blonde uber-bogan Annaliese Smoel, who was ostensibly busted for stealing a bar mat at some Aussie bar in Thailand but had apparently verbally abused the cops who spotted it in her bag. Miranda might have had a point, given the sympathy perhaps unjustifiably extended to Smoel, but she perverts her own claims of a double standard by implying that Smoel should have been given a going over in the media while still claiming that Willie Mason should have got off more lightly. Note to Miranda: that pretty much amounts to reversing the double standard. Additionally, Annaliese Smoel was just some random drunk bogan. Mason, while a bogan, is also a public figure and is paid damn good money to be one. You don't see Hazem el Mazri getting drunk and pissing in public, do you?

Next, Miranda touts Rugby League as society's cure to problems 'men' have with aggression and 'sexual motivation':

Killing off rugby league isn't going to stop men being aggressive and sexually motivated. In fact, such games are the few outlets boys have left for excess physical energy.

Well, where to begin? The sexist assumption she makes that all men are aggressive? Or the ignorant assumption that men are the only people who are sexually motivated? Miranda's a bit abnormal, sure, but no cold fish, if her drooling references to hairless male chests and Schapelle Corby are anything to go by. There's a slight possibility that she's just a bit out of touch with reality. Here's a newsflash, Miranda: pretty much everyone past the onset of puberty is sexually motivated to some degree. It's learning to use that motivation to get what you want without causing hurt or distress to any other party involved in the process that's important to society. Funnily enough, playing Rugby League really doesn't seem to have been so effective in helping certain NRL use those urges appropriately.

Try not to shudder as you read the next paragraph...

In sanctioned team violence on the football field, young men can test their courage and express what it feels to be male, to have testosterone surging through young bodies, building huge muscles and attack instincts for which society has little use any more. It is teaching them, not to be violent but how to control their violent urges.

What a confused mess of concepts. First, does Rugby League create attack instincts, or control the ones that are already there? Frankly, I'm inclined to say neither is the case. As for the reference to the 'violence' of the game- what of it? To my knowledge, no-one has been stupid enough to link the mechanics of Rugby League to some players' apparent inability to determine whether the sexual situation they have entered into is consensual and appropriate. Well, until now.

As for 'expressing what it feels to be male', erm, where to go from here? How does Rugby League allow muscular, virile young men, bodies surging with testosterone (bucket of cold water, please!) to 'express what it feels to be male' any more than any other team sport? Oh, and Miranda's boys- it might be a good idea to discourage mum from attending your games if any of your friends are literate and unfortunate enough to have read her column. It'll only creep them out.

The rest of the article is such a mish-mash of Miranda's popular bugbears- 'androgynous feminists', women who learn that sex undertaken purely for enjoyment is ok (it's not!!1!!!1), and 'popular culture' that sexualises children. You might have thought that that last one was the creation of a host of corporate and media entities in order to sell shit to kids, but you'd be wrong- it's those damn androgynous feminists who run the world these days.

Finally, Miranda finishes with the admonishment that men aren't all violent and predatory. Thank god someone came out and said it, because I was getting afraid to leave the house, thinking they were all rapists and stuff. Yeah. Where would we be without Miranda Devine? From defending a small group of NRL players accused of sexual misconduct to defending the game itself from the imaginary attacks of 'teh androgynous feminists', to defending men from wholly imaginary accusations of being violent sexual predators- while at the same time insisting that all men have violent and sexual urges that can only be contained through the playing of Rugby League and other sports that are Traditionally Male... Maybe it's just a long time since I've been Devined, but isn't that deranged even by her usual standards?

Sex ed for journalists: Separating group sex, adultery and rape.

One bothersome aspect of the NRL 'group sex scandal' is the very name it has been given by virtue of the fact that no crime was found to have been committed; thanks to the unsavoury nature of the incident, commentators everywhere have rushed to condemn 'group sex' willy nilly.

Group sex is when three or more people engage in mutually consensual sexual activity. There's absolutely nothing wrong with group sex. It shouldn't be considered scandalous if NRL players like to have group sex. It could be considered somewhat strange that a whole bunch of guys in a particularly homophobic subsection of society, none of whom are openly bisexual or or gay, all like to get their dicks out in the same room with a single woman essentially being a facilitator for some pretty homoerotic activity. But I digress. Group sex between consenting adults, hopefully all disease-free and practicing safe sex as well as enjoying themselves mightily, shouldn't be considered a behaviour worthy of condemnation.

Nor should a player be condemned for engaging in this practice with someone other than his wife or partner- unless, of course, he's dishonest about it with her (I won't say 'him', given that there isn't a single 'out' player in the entire league). Even practicing safe sex, the risk of STD transmission is not zero and therefore the player has a responsibility to inform his partner that he is engaging in an activity that may place her at a slightly higher risk of contracting an STD. Besides which, if your partner is someone you can't be honest with about the sort of things you like to do, maybe it's time to consider a) growing up a little and learning the value of honesty or b) ditching your narrow-minded partner for someone whose views and values are more closely aligned with your own, thus freeing up said partner to find someone more sexually conservative.

Funnily enough I get the impression that most of the players are fairly conservative in their home lives and don't involve their wives in this kind of 'fun', let alone inform them of what they're getting up to if the desperate phonecalls by players' wives to the manager of the hotel in the Jones incident were anything to go by.

There is also the question of why these guys feel the need to do the whole 'walk in through the unlocked door after your mate has taken a woman into the room and join in' thing. I'm sure any one of them with a driving need to engage in that specific scenario could easily arrange for it to happen with the knowledge and consent of the woman involved. If there is an obvious lesson to be learned from the revelations of the sexual subculture of the NRL it's that there's no shortage of women wanting to fuck NRL players, and not necessarily just one at a time. Which again begs the question why just one woman, guys? I'm truly baffled. I mean, from an extremely straight woman's point of view, the more cock the better (note: purely from a desirability point of view, not from experience, at this point in my life!), but I was under the impression that most straight guys' fantasies revolved around having lots and lots of girls and not too much man-meat. It's not like footy players have to make do with limited numbers, like so many guys!

One thing's certain, and that's that this sausage-fest with a side of vagina is not about team bonding or whatever bullshit has occasionally been put about by commentators in the media. If there was any real 'bonding' then I'm pretty sure that Matthew Johns' 11 'mates' wouldn't allow him to be copping the fallout from the Four Corners episode solo without coming forward to cop their share of what's happened- particularly since Matthew Johns was one of the two players the woman went to the room with voluntarily.

As far as commentary goes, most of it has been full of condemnation of group sex of any kind, as if it's almost as barbaric and despicable as rape itself. Margie McDonald of The Australian, however, takes a different tack, condemning the idea of a woman having sex with more than one guy at a time and making the pretty despicable suggestion that it should be obvious to any woman who wants to fuck a footy player that there is every likelihood of the entire team busting in and wanting a piece of her too. Essentially putting out for one (or two, or three) is putting out for the whole team. Phew. I'm not kidding- here it is, straight from the horse's mouth:

I make no judgment, but I do have a problem with women who can't make an educated choice: "If I go back to that player's hotel room or even out to a toilet cubicle at the back of a nightclub, can I really trust that the player I left with will be the only player there when I arrive, or even half-an-hour later?"

Ahh... thanks for that, Margie. You've just undone god-knows-how-many hours of hard work by the NRL's 'consent training seminar' facilitators and essentially told women who sleep with players to expect to be raped by their team mates. Is it just NRL players, Margie? Or does every woman who hooks up with a guy who plays team sports of any kind have to sign away her right to have a say in who she has sexual contact with? Christ. I'm sure there are enough NRL players who are decent people to be offended by what Margie McDonald has told every woman they'll ever hook up with to expect. Imagine having to spell out to your date/potential shag that no, you're not going to secretly invite the whole team into the room while she's on all fours facing away from the door. Because apparently that's what every single non-rape-minded player is going to have to do if Margie's proposal gains any traction!

Evidently there are a whole bunch of men and women in Australian society who need to better learn just what 'consent' means when it comes to sex. Less of a priority but still important is the need for journalists to learn to distinguish between consensual sexual activity, adultery and rape.

The first is a matter for peoples' private lives, whether they are NRL players or not. It doesn't matter how many people are involved in said activity. The second depends on the definition adultery is given by two parties in a marriage. You never know- there might be an NRL wife who has to get up there in front of the cameras and pretend to be shocked and outraged by her husband engaging in sex outside of their marriage when she has been fine with it all along, simply because society views an open marriage as deviant and genuine infidelity as perfectly normal.

The third is a crime and should never be covered up or excused.

Australian journalists, just like the rest of Australian society, have fucked up on all three.

Matthew Johns just a product of Aussie society

Now aside from the interesting dichotomy between the aggressively yob/macho culture of NRL and many of its players penchant for participating in some of the most homoerotic 'straight' group sex I've ever heard of, I think there's something missing from many peoples' interpretation of what 'group sex' actually means.

See, group sex involves known quantities. It involves consenting adults.

What it does not involve is a woman consensually hooking up with a guy who, unbeknownst to her, has invited all his mates to come along and do whatever they like to her. That's rape, plain and simple.

There is no tipping point at which a woman consenting to sex with a defined number of men has suddenly given de facto consent to a free-for-all on the part of a whole bunch of men she has never met, let alone consented to have sex with.

The way society treats rape victims, though, it's difficult enough if they're not a virgin, let alone if they've consented to sex with more than one guy at a time. In for a penny, in for a pound. If she enjoys having sex with two guys at once, can you prove she didn't ask for twelve? It's practically the same thing, at least in the eyes of any defence lawyer worth his salt.

Watching the Four Corners 'Code of Silence' on Monday night, I couldn't help noting the responses by participants during the 'seminar on consent' for junior (under-20's) players- the NRL's 'Rape is Bad, mmkay?' programme: A drunk woman (an actor) is shown entering a bedroom with a guy, who then sneaks out so his mate can go in and have a go, only to have the woman storm out in distress after discovering that the guy having sex with her was not the guy she went home with. Several of the young players said, in essence, that she was asking for it. "She flirted with both of them". "She put out first". One even joked that whether the rapist would wind up in trouble depended on how good his defence lawyer was.

They were then shown a video of a very drunk young man being taken home and into bed with another guy. The young man wakes up in the morning, realises a guy has had sex with him and leaves in a hurry, obviously distressed. This, according to the young players, was simply not fair. Sure young guy was incredibly drunk and went home with another guy, but in their opinion no-one in that situation is ever 'asking for it' when 'it' involves a guy being done up the arse by another guy. Their hypocrisy was duly pointed out by the session facilitator.

What wasn't noted, however, was that these young players weren't seasoned NRL veterans who'd spent years as professional players. They were not a product of the NRL, they were young, fresh and a product of their community. The Australian community. That same community that, when a woman alleges rape by NRL players launches into a debate as to whether provocatively dressed young women providing (consensual) sex-on-tap for NRL players means that every one of them is 'asking for it'. Even when they're not. After all, 'she flirted with him...'.

This isn't the NRL's problem, it's an Australian problem. As much as I detest the game and the bogan/yob culture surrounding it, it really is just a distilled version of all the worst characteristics of Australian society. For the NRL to change, we need to change.

Sarah's first fun-run

Gam and I took up running two months ago, motivated by a few of our friends doing the same. We (minus Gam) all took part in our first fun-run a month ago- a mere 3km, but that's 2.7km more than I was capable of doing when I started out. So here we are before the race:



And here's me, on the final stretch... look pretty good, don't I? Pretty fit, huh? Let's just pretend I wasn't struggling by this point...




Oh, wait! What's that?! Shit... is that a 12-year-old?



Yeah... it's a 12-year-old... The 3km? That's for the beginners and the small children. This particular kid was one of the slower ones- the fast ones were already sprinting toward the finish line by the time I hit the half-way mark.



And guess what? Pretty much everyone else only got one photo taken of them. But the photographers obviously liked the sight of me being humiliated by a small child so much that they decided to take a whole series of photos!





As if the sight of numerous grandpas geared up to run the full half-marathon- and finishing it- wasn't depressing enough...



Or is that inspiring? Go grandpa! Maybe if I keep this up I'll be able to run a marathon by the time I'm 100...

Australian Open: amazing Nadal-Verdasco semi-final

I'm not a fan of Rafael Nadal and was hoping to see him go down last night to Fernando Verdasco. But both men provided such a fantastic game of tennis- the longest in Australian Open history, apparently, that whoever won well deserved to do so. In fact, as Nadal proclaimed afterwards, Verdasco deserved to win too! Forget about the Federer/Roddick match-up in the other men's semi-final: this was in another league altogether.

It was brilliant- even despite knowing the results well in advance thanks to Channel Seven being a pack of arseholes and refusing to air the match live, it was worth watching for the incredible tennis being played. To give you some vague idea of the standard of play witnessed, Verdasco did not make a double fault until well into the fourth set. Just incredible.

While it was rather pathetic of Seven to be still screening the match at around 1am, long after every other media outlet had finished their reports on the results, I suppose in this case we should be glad they deigned to screen it at all.

Surely the men's final is going to be something of a letdown after this... but at least it might be screened live for once, right?

Channel Seven SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Channel Seven sucking is nothing new. Their incredibly shit coverage of the Olympics is surely beyond compare when it comes to suckfulness. Still, I believe they've reached new heights with their latest effort. Get this:

The Australian Open men's quarter-final between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Fernando Verdasco is in progress. It's a good match, not a wipe-out, it's going to go to at least four sets, with Tsonga having won one and Verdasco two (at the time of writing this post). At the end of the third set, at 5:30pm, Channel fucking Seven cuts its coverage of the Australian Open men's tennis quarter final for... Deal or fucking No Deal. Un-fucking-believeable. Followed by their crappy turn-your-brain-to-mush 'news' and Home and-a-fucking-Way. The fucking cheek of it. It's a once-a-year event, the marquee event for Australian tennis, our only Grand Slam, and they fucking cut from the quarter final to show Deal or No Deal. Pricks.

Channel Seven don't deserve the tennis. The ATP (if they aren't money-grubbing whores and actually take the sport seriously) should give the coverage to SBS or the ABC to maintain the integrity of the event. Deal or No Deal takes precedence over the men's quarter final at Channel Seven, for fuck's sake. It's bad enough that half the time I can look up the scores from the night matches on the Australian Open website on Google and find out the result of a match that is still being played on Channel Seven because they've delayed the screening so they can show Home and Away. Cutting away from a great match half way through, however, is an even worse insult to viewers and the game.

We did it!!! Matt Mitcham is Sports Performer of the Year!

Yes, it was clearly our campaign that led to Matthew Mitcham winning the 2008 Sports Performer of the Year award and beating Stephanie Rice. Who, while being hot and fantastic and everything, has had everything served up on a plate post-Olympics while the even hotter and more fantastic Matt Mitcham, official VTAY poster-boy, has been ignored. Ignored no longer! Take that, Steph Rice! Oh, wait- Steph voted for him too!



Technically the credit for the win must go to Michelle, whose vote clearly put Our Matt over the line. And doesn't he look spunky in a suit? How is it possible that he looks just as good with his clothes ON? I think VTAY's next move will be to start a campaign to give Daniel Craig the boot and have Our Matt installed as the next James Bond. Although by the looks of it, Stephanie Rice could kick more arse than Our Matt... maybe we need a new, all-Aussie franchise where she could be the superhero and he could be the sidekick?

Vote for Matt Mitcham- vote vote vote!

There's one week left to get in and vote for Matt Mitcham for the SMH/Age/Colonial First State Sports Performer of the Year awards. Yes, there are other nominees, but Matt Mitcham is our official VTAY pinup boy. Plus his win, and his story, was one of the best of the 2008 Olympic games. Steph Rice has won enough shit already this year, including an $800 000 two-year contract with Channel 7, so get in there and do your bit to ensure that she doesn't win this too!

In addition, I believe you go in the draw for $5000 if you vote... so go and vote- for Matthew Mitcham!

She's right, but she's probably doomed

I agree with Dr Jeanette Young, Queensland's chief health officer, that alcohol company sponsorship of sporting events should be banned within 5 years:

Dr Jeannette Young said alcohol advertising had to be treated like tobacco advertising and should be totally eliminated from sports sponsorship over a number of years.

She said battling alcohol had to be done on three fronts; increasing prices, reducing alcohol advertising and "removing the glamour", in the same way tobacco advertising was reduced.

"Society has totally changed their view towards smoking and we have to do the same with alcohol," Dr Young said.

It's a shame that whatever government happens to be in power over the next 5 years, whether it's Bligh's Labor or the Borg's LNP, those same alcohol companies will be pulling strings with influential people in an attempt to have her relieved of her position.

Aussie athletes who will not be appearing on Uncle Toby's products

"Goddamn! I can't get enough of this shit! Pass me some more!"

Jessicah Schipper - Looks like uncle Toby.

Matthew Mitcham - Close acquaintance of Uncle Toby's sister, Dorothy.

They'll have to console themselves with watching Stephanie Rice earning $800,000 on TV and whisper to themselves how it's really just about getting to compete.

Mitcham wins

Looks like Matt Mitcham is the only non-Chinese diver to take out a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. Good on him, and what a nice story. A worthy pin-up boy indeed.

Aussies CAN get beaten fair and square

Yesterday, on every bit of news I heard about Grant Hackett 'losing' the 1500m swimming event at the Beijing Olympics, there was mention of how the gold medallist, Tunisia's Oussama Mellouli, had previously been banned for a 'doping violation'. Report after report referred to Mellouli taking a 'banned substance', insinuating that he was a filthy, dirty cheat who stole the gold medal from Our Grant. After all, if an Australian or American didn't win it's practically evidence of shenanigans, right? Especially with a name like Oussama, a name that happens to sound like that of a well-known terrorist.

Given that Mellouli had been given a light penalty for the violation and the Australian media studiously avoided any mention of what the 'banned substance' that caused his 'doping violation' actually was, suggesting the offense was so slight that the facts would detract from the narrative they were inventing, I decided to look it up.

Mellouli took an Adderall. Adderall is a performance-enhancing substance, if by performance we mean "staying up all night to finish an assignment". Which is what, as a university student at the time, Mellouli claims to have been doing when he took the Adderall. It's a drug most commonly used to treat ADHD, but is commonly misused by students for this purpose. God knows there've been times I could have done with one... As far as I know, Adderall does not impact positively on athletic performance, let alone two days after consumption. Any athlete would know that swallowing anything without first triple-checking whether it contains any substance banned under anti-doping rules is a dumb idea, but it happens. Even to Australians. And don't we get our knickers in a knot over how silly those rules are in such cases?

I'm glad Grant Hackett and Australian team coach Alan Thompson didn't see fit to get stuck into the mud-slinging. There are probably thousands of athletes at the Beijing games who are taking performance-enhancing drugs. Most of them won't get caught, but the reaction of the media to 'our' champ being beaten was petty and smacked of sour grapes.

Olympics: Seven's crap coverage continues

In more Olympics news, Togo has won its first-ever Olympic medal (bizarrely, a bronze in the men's single kayak slalom for Benjamin Boukpeti). Do you think this news made Channel 7's coverage?

Don't be silly.

Thank god the BBC is that much less parochial than the bloody jingoistic Australian media.

I switched on the TV this afternoon, and while SBS was showing some great stuff- first an exciting men's volleyball match between Russia and Brazil, then a thriller of a men's handball showdown between Korea and Iceland, Channel 7 was showing... replays of the morning's swimming, in which Australia won some medals. The same sort of shitty coverage as the last games. Thank god SBS is there to provide something of a backup and remind us it's not all about Australia.

This time I'm not the only one whinging, it seems- news.com.au websites are reporting that disgruntled viewers actually started a thread titled 'worst coverage ever of any Olympics' on a forum on Seven's own website. I bet the bastards just delete it- I wrote them an email to complain after the Athens Olympics and they never responded.

Jamaican athletes cry blood-poor

Members of Jamaica's athletics team are apparently complaining about the number of doping tests they're being subjected to at the Olympics, to the point where 100m runner Asafa Powell has claimed that the amount of blood being taken in the tests may adversely affect his performance.

It's not that Jamaica's athletes are necessarily any more filthy than the US athletics team when it comes to the presence of drug cheats, but the reason Jamaican athletes are being heavily scrutinised is because Jamaica doesn't have its own anti-doping agency:

Neither the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) nor the Jamaican authorities have been able to confirm to BBC Sport that [the Jamaican Anti-Doping Commission] is actually operating yet. The situation is further muddied by Jamaica's decision to opt out of the Wada-approved Caribbean Regional Anti-Doping Organisation (Rado).

The only organisation currently undertaking widespread testing in Jamaica is the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

The Monaco-based governing body has raised its game in recent years, and now actively targets countries without adequate anti-doping regimes of their own (Jamaica is the IAAF's fifth most tested nation), but question marks remain over the effectiveness and transparency of its operations.

Of course, more testing doesn't mean the cheats are likely to get caught- the BALCO scandal demonstrated that clearly enough. But it's a bit rich of Jamaica's top sprinters to whinge about all the testing when they're from a country renowned for its lassez faire approach to testing for doping in its athletes at a time when they happen to be ruling the roost in the 100m. Maybe they ought to be whinging about how their government's lack of action on the doping front is leading to all the unwanted attention.

Olympics unfair even without drugs

Shameless money-grubber

All the recent news about the possibility of systematic doping in the Russian Olympic athletics team proves is that the Russians are 10 years behind the US when it comes to producing the best and least-detectable drugs to cheat with. What's hilarious about the whole thing is that the IOC is feigning shock that anyone could be involved in doping.

As for Tamyn Lewis' rant about the fact she'll be up against drug cheats this Olympics, well... it's hard to blame her. If there's one team that's clean it's the Aussie athletics team. Otherwise they'd probably be winning more medals. On the other hand, even without drugs it's clearly not a level playing field. Just check out the stories of runners Samiya Yuusf Omar of Somalia, and Hem Bunting of Cambodia, part of the BBC's excellent 'against the odds' series. We hear plenty of athletes complaining about an unfair playing field thanks to the prevalence of drugs, but never complaining about the fact that they're already running an unfair race thanks to the huge advantages that the amount of funding available for sport in western countries affords them.

Given the fact that Australia already punches above its weight in terms of medals per capita and public funding of sports, I resent AOC fatcat John Coates demanding more taxpayers' money to fund elite sport in Australia. When winning gold medals is indicative of nothing more than how much public money is flung at a sport, it's hard to think of it as sport at all. Certainly it's not sporting. Maybe Australia should be offering more scholarships to overseas athletes from impoverished countries so we don't have the embarassment of flogging competitors who would provide a real challenge if only they could afford a good pair of shoes and a bit of meat to add to their rice every day, let alone a team of sports psychologists, doctors, physiotherapists and dieticians to cater to their every need. The Olympics was never supposed to be a competition of economic might, but that's the way it's turned out.

D'Arcy to claim self-defense, shows off small bruise

Get this: Nick D'Arcy will be claiming self defense in his trial for the alleged assault of Simon Cowley.

D'Arcy's lawyers will also be cross-examining Cowley:

Mr D'Arcy's lawyers told Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court today they wanted Mr Cowley to be cross-examined because he had failed to recall in his police statement some events that other witnesses had reported.

I think the obvious response to that would be: "I think it's quite obvious my memory was affected after being felled with a hit from D'Arcy so vicious that I suffered multiple facial fractures so severe that it required 5 titanium plates to be inserted into my face".

Mr Cowley, 27, had five permanent titanium plates fitted after suffering fractures to his jaw, eye socket, hard palate, cheekbone and nose.

He had to feed through a straw for some weeks after the incident.

We're on drugs

So often in the Australian media we see the 'outroige' when a top foreign athlete who competes with Australians for medals and status is busted taking a banned drug. Sure there's no 'outroige' yet from the Aussie media on the news of Jessica Hardy's positive doping test, but that's only because the news isn't official yet. It'll come.

All it says to me, when these athletes are caught, is that our athletes are probably on something too. After all, if a top US swimmer takes performance-enhancing drugs and sometimes beats a top Australian swimmer, sometimes doesn't, are we really so naive as to believe that it's always natural talent that got our guys there? That all Australian swimmers are clean? The same thing goes for the Tour de France, that embarrassing, drug-riddled farce of a cycling competition. If the cyclist who's coming 12th, or 20th is busted and carted off by the police, is it really so easy to believe that the cyclists who are coming first, second, third and fourth are just genetically superior athletes, or that they train that much harder? It really is that easy to believe if it's an Australian, if the media coverage is to be trusted.

And before we start trumpeting our rigourous testing regime, as various sporting bodies in Australia do, we need to bear in mind that they can't test for everything. And when they do test for something, sometimes the laboratory just doesn't do a very good job. Or the measure for a positive test is set so high that even the most obvious positive samples pass with a negative.

Is such cynicism unfair on the top athletes who actually are clean, assuming there are any? Yes. The cynicism in itself is fair, given the situation with doping in world sport. For a hard-working athlete who not only has to go up against the cheats and undoubtedly lose out to them in competition from time to time but then be tainted by association simply by having matched it with the drug-enhanced freaks, however, it must be truly galling.

So for me, it's not only Channel 7's appallingly narrow, crappy and jingoistic coverage that will have me avoiding switching on the TV for the Beijing Olympics, it's the drugs. As if the influence of economic disparity on athlete performance wasn't enough to render the idea of an 'international competition' a fantasy, the use of performance-enhancing drugs have sapped any of the thrill from the competition.