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Keywords: Olympics

  • CARTOON

    And in the Preferred Prime Minister event...

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 08 August 2012

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Olympics silver whining

    • Various
    • 07 August 2012

    Our species believes it progresses without limitation. We shout when a swimmer wins silver, 'That's no inspiration'. As humans pound forward, no 'burden of care' limitation ... We deserve only winners, our species the sole inspiration.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Olympics and business world need to grow up

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 August 2012
    9 Comments

    The Olympic Games see many thousands of mainly young athletes from all around the world competing for a hundred or so medals. So the point of the exercise can't be to win. It is to lose. Or rather the Games are a school for learning how to lose and so grow in humanity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The opposite of Australian swimming hubris

    • John Honner
    • 01 August 2012
    10 Comments

    The Spit Baths consist of two swimming areas bounded by boardwalks built on piles sunk into Middle Harbour. At low tide there is barely enough water to swim in. Olympic medallist John Devitt does time trials in just a few feet of water. There is no black line on a sterile tiled floor, just sand and seaweed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What's the point of the Olympics?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 01 August 2012
    16 Comments

    The games are an escapist spectacle, where the flags of Iran, Palestine and Syria flutter without irony alongside those of the US, Israel and Turkey, and delegates from Spain and Greece wave as if their nation's economies have not fractured the Eurozone. The dissonance between the games and reality has become hard to ignore.

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  • CARTOON

    Gillard's games

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 01 August 2012
    1 Comment

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Olympic torch should shine on athletes not nations

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 July 2012
    14 Comments

    Nationalism is the scourge of the modern Olympics. We slide too easily from speaking of 'how our athletes are doing' to 'how we are doing'. We should consider discontinuing national anthems and medal tallies and even introduce a fixed host city.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Beyond the Liesel Jones fat spat

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 27 July 2012
    7 Comments

    The brutal media critique of swimmer Liesel Jones on the eve of the Olympics was typical of society's tendency to chew up and spit out its heroes once it deems them to be no longer useful. If it dented her confidence, Jones may have taken strength from Australia's first ever international sports champion.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Planet Football's alternative world order

    • Michael Visontay
    • 11 June 2010
    3 Comments

    In the Olympics, the countries with the biggest populations win the most medals. Not in the World Cup. The United States' underdog status is one of the unifying pleasures of football fans around the world.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Winter Games cool Aussies' long hot summer

    • Michael Visontay
    • 15 February 2010
    1 Comment

    The Winter Olympics make for beautiful television — skiers hurtling down the slopes, snowboarders doing somersaults in the air, skaters dancing on the ice. Yet they occupy an unusual place in our imagination. They feel more like recreation than competitive sport.

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  • MEDIA

    China turns tables on Australia's Indian racism

    • Peter Hodge
    • 27 January 2010
    14 Comments

    When western campaigners used the Beijing Olympics to promote the Tibet issue, the Chinese felt the attention was sensationalist and unfair. So it's no surprise the Chinese media took notice when  violence against foreign students in Australia came to prominence.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Olympics a good time to start wars

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 15 August 2008
    5 Comments

    Politics is never far from the surface at the Olympics. Even at the so-called friendly Games in Melbourne in 1956, the famous 'Blood in the Water' water-polo match reflected tensions surrounding the Soviet invasion of Hungary ten days before.

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