buter's BABY blog

Yep, it's that time. The 'Friendly Games' have started in Melbourne. You all know I'm not really a sports freak. In fact my only skill probably lies in fooling people into thinking I can fence. That came to a head when I was appointed a competition president for the fencing portion of the World Junior Modern Pentathlon a couple of years ago. After that, fencing seems to have gone by the wayside.

Anyway, today's story is about .. "which games?" "The Commonwealth Games". So being a non-sporting person, I always approach the television coverage with cynicism. All those youthful athletic sweaty bodies, all that competitiveness and ambition ... but then when I sit down and watch it, something comes over me .... seeing the competitors from the low-profile nations entering the stadium ... there's the team that took 9 days to travel to the Games because they had to catch the mail ship out to England and fly from there (they have to leave before the closing ceremony to catch the mail ship back) ... there's the team that had no uniforms until Channel 9 organised some for them ..

It's like, these really are a friendly competition. Apart from all the winning, and stuff, there's a whole bunch of people who are just so glad to be there, representing their country. It's a very warm'n'fuzzy feeling to see their faces when they entered the MCG and all 80,000 people cheered for them. In some cases that's probably more than their entire population! As someone said, these countries are sub-olympic microdots on the face of the earth, and this is their only chance to shine. In spite of - or perhaps because of - the missing Americans, Chinese and Eastern Europeans, these Games are more about fun than winning. Or it could just be that we all had to learn English ... so the teams and officials can actually all converse reasonably freely in the same language. (Is that why the Americans don't come?)

Well, except for Australia. For us, it's still all about the winning. Isn't it?