History Forum / General / British History / March 2006

But you would never have known anyone apart from Australia were
competing if you had been watching Australian TV. Talk about
parochial.

Sorry, but I have to say, "big whoop." I laud the decision to fold the
games for the disabled into the elite games, and the decision of
Canadian team to make the paralympian Chantal Petitclerc their flag
bearer, but apart from that they seem irrelevant. I have seen nothing
of the broadcasts (if it's not live it's not worth it, and CBC radio
regularly scooped its TV services). When the Winter Olympiad was on it
was wall to wall over here, and a fair few Yanks were able to pick it
on CBC (a refuge from their daytime drudgery of soaps and talk shows).
The Commonwealth Games were also competing for air time with the
Winter Paralympiad, so attention spans were even shorter. I think the
gold medal win of the sledge hockey team as it bumped off more
favoured squads got more coverage than any event in Melbourne.

I had actually checked out the games' site over the last two weeks
because I wanted to know if Martin Sinclair, a sometime poster to SMN
and an officer of the Royal Scots, was competing for Scotland in
rifle -- he was, and earned a silver medal in the pairs prone event.