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Now as you know, we love to celebrate sport here at Inside
Sport. Love it. Can't get enough of it. In this space right
here, we'll bag the boofheads and the dribblers, the moronic and
inept. But rarely will we roundhouse kick a sport. So listen,
what follows isn't a kick in the teeth to, um...Jesus, this is
harder to say that first thought, so let's just come out and say
it...
Swimming is boring as batshit.
There. Said it.
It's a bold time to make such a statement, but let's get serious:
it's only around the time of a world champs or a Comm Games or
the Olympics that the grand old sport of doing laps in a 50m pool
raises a heartbeat. We can sit here and gush over Libby Lenton
and Grant Hackett and Leisel Jones and all those pre-pubescent
swimmers becoming golden girls and boys and Madame Butterflies
of the pool, as they have at the world championships in Montreal
in the last week. As we should, because we are so damned fine
at this caper up against the rest of the world that it ain't funny.
But, ultimately, how many bloody care? How long are the names
Edmistone, Schipper and that other young lass who won something
(don't worry, it'll come to me) going to be etched in the memories?
No disrespect to the swimmers, of course. I've no doubt that Hackett
is fitter than a lot of footy players, and few could question
their commitment: try getting up and churning through laps from
the age of eight, under the nose of a crusty old swim coach brandishing
a stop-watch, at the same hour some of us getting home at.
Here's a theory: the problem lies in swimming's lack of personalities,
its lack of characters. They are too nice, too squeaky clean.
Where's the bad boy of Australian swimming? Where's the next Scott
Miller? Where's the loose cannon drinking an Olympic pool of vodka
before a big race and then braining them with a trail of vomit
behind him the next day? We need more playboys, and not necessarily
ones brandishing black mullets at the Logies and wearing designer
threads at the opening of an envelope. That's what swimming needs:
some upstarts, some punks, some bitterness. We need Leisel Jones
to get out to the pool and say, "Get that up yer, Dawn. How
dare you call me a pretentious little brat." We need Hackett
giving two-fingered salutes to the opposition, not selling juice
masters. The last I can remember any swimmer rubbing victory in
someone's face was when the men's relay team pretended to play
guitars during the Sydney Olympics, a rejoinder to something American
Gary Hall Jr said. Yeah, real madmen.
I bet plenty of us tried to get excited during these
world champs. I bet plenty of us tried to reach the levels of
enthusiasm as Channel Nine commentator Ray Warren, who calls swimming
like a State of Origin. But how many - the Fanatics excluded -
actually did? These world champs will come and go and then we'll
shelve swimming in our brains until six weeks before the Commonwealth
Games in Melbourne next year. Australian swimming is reaching
another golden age - but it wins a gold medal for killing insomnia.
What
do you think? Click your way to our Comebacks
page and tell us.
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