Commonwealth Games Memories


I was reading about the Commonwealth Games in the last newsletter and it brought back a lot of memories! Our family went to Melbourne for the occasion and had a great time – swimming, netball, basketball and of course a couple of sessions of athletics. The first was the day of the women’s marathon as written about by others already. We were there to watch the women’s javelin and saw Kimberly Mickle celebrate her bronze medal a couple of throws too early and ultimately be relegated to 4th place – a lesson there for everyone!! The finish of the women’s marathon did indeed bring tears to the eyes and it was a tremendous effort by those two ladies after 42 kms of pain already. Incomprehensible to me how that can be possible.

However there were a couple of things that happened that day that contrasted with a later day of competition that I would like to comment on. Kerryn McCann seemed to be so involved with media commitments and celebrations that she didn’t even notice when one of her team mates was doing the wobbly knee finish to her marathon effort. The noise from the crowd would have been enough to alert anyone in the stadium, that something bad was happening but I didn’t see her go to her team mate or show any acknowledgment or encouragement for that poor girl to get over the line. Perhaps I missed it and am misjudging her.

The second thing that happened was that two of our javelin throwers were caught up in the atmosphere and decided to do a lap of honour and soak it all up as much as they could. This was OK especially since one of the Adelaide officials chased them around the track trying to get them to come off as they weren’t supposed to be doing that, which was a good laugh for us!! However, there were three girls there representing Australia in the javelin. For two of them to go off and celebrate and leave the other girl behind did not seem like good team work to me. Now maybe they asked her and she didn’t want to do it – again maybe I am misjudging them.

These events were brought home to me the next day (I think) when Brooke won her gold medal. We weren’t lucky enough to be there that day but there was plenty of coverage everywhere!!! After the competition she gathered all of the throwers together and shared her moment of absolute joy with those other girls as she did a lap of honour. She was the gold medalist but I think all those girls went home feeling like winners. Thank you to Brooke for just being herself and showing a wonderful example of sportsmanship – moments like that show the true person and she is surely a gem.

We saw Alwyn Jones, a former Enfield athlete, shine on the big stage and saw Tatiana have the time of her life as she soaked up the atmosphere of her last big meet as much as the officials continually tried to make her leave the track.

It’s hard to believe it was a year ago. We see so little top quality athletics in Adelaide now – we used to be spoilt with people like Linford Christie, Cathy Freeman, Melinda Gainsford, Lisa O’Dea, Jane Fleming, Andrew Curry etc etc competing here each year in Telstra-A series events. Now we can’t even tempt Tamsyn Lewis to come here and train and be near her beloved cricketer!!!

I hope the profile of the sport can be improved so our juniors can see these world class athletes and be inspired to follow their dreams!!