1. Cathy Freeman only ran in one event at the 2000 Sydney Olympics but she dominated those
Games as completely as if she had been competing every day.
The first aboriginal athlete ever to compete for Australia, Freeman became the conscience of
a nation during the Olympics, a symbol of the guilt many Australians still feel about the way
they treated the continent's original inhabitants.
Freeman lit the flame at the opening ceremony and when she lined up for the final of the
400m, the pressure on her to win was enormous.
The roar in the stadium that greeted the starting gun lasted the whole lap. Freeman, wearing
a hooded body suit, led from start to finish. At the end, in one of the iconic pictures of
those games, she sank to the track and sat down, her face a picture not of joy but of relief.
Usain Bolt of Jamaica celebrates winning the men's 100m final of the athletics competition in
the National Stadium at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games (Pic:Reuters)
2. I am not sure that I believe in Usain Bolt but sitting in the Bird's Nest in Beijing and
seeing him
obliterate the rest of the field in the 100m final still took my breath away.
I knew in those startling 9.69 seconds what it must have been like to have been in Seoul in
1988 to see Ben Johnson blow away rivals that included Carl Lewis and Linford Christie.
It was the nonchalance of Bolt that was the most shocking thing of all, the way that he eased
up with about ten metres to go, looked around and spread his arms out wide in triumph.
This was the 100m men's final and he was coasting. Despite the cursed lineage of the event,
the positive tests attached to previous champions like Justin Gatlin, Johnson and Christie,
there is still an incredible thrill about watching the fastest man in the world.
What Bolt did in Beijing, winning gold in the 200m too and breaking Michael Johnson's world
record, made him the star of the Games.
Steve Williams, James Cracknell, Ed Coode and Matthew Pinsent
3. Seeing Steve Redgrave win his fifth Olympic gold medal in Sydney was special but I enjoyed
seeing Britain's men's coxless four win in Athens more.
Advertisement - article continues below
Maybe it was because it was such an amazingly close race between the British and Canadian
boats, a contest so nerve-wracking that many did not know who had won when the boats crossed
the line.
There was great drama, too, in men like Sir Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell, incredible
sportsmen in their own right, trying to win gold without Redgrave and knowing that silver
would be regarded as a desperate failure.
It was Pinsent's fourth gold and he wept like a child on the podium after the race. It was
sporting drama at its very best.
Olympic sailor Shirley Robertson (Pic:Reuters)
4. I have not included Shirley Robertson's victory in the Europe class of the sailing event
in Sydney in my top 5 because it was one of the outstanding sporting achievements of the
three Olympics I have covered although obviously it was a superb accomplishment by Robertson
that was justly celebrated.
I included it because the moment of her victory seemed to me to encapsulate much of the magic
that the Olympics can bring.
I spent the whole of that day in a small motor boat on Sydney Harbour, being buffeted by
waves and soaked in spray, trying to follow Robertson's exploits.
It was one of the most beautiful sporting scenes I have ever witnessed, a flotilla of boats
in one of the most beautiful harbours in the world on a gloriously sunny day.
And a sport which is rarely given the oxygen of publicity was suddenly centre stage, more
important for a few hours than the Premier League or an Ashes Test. It summed up much that is
best about the Olympics.
the good yeah~~
回复删除