The hidden Olympic effort
Having marked already the 99.94 anniversary, Australia will celebrate the centenary of the birth of Donald Bradman on Wednesday. I've done a piece on that for our programme. I'd love to get your comments.
Staying with "the Don", the number of comments for that Brits' Olympics success piece reached a Bradmanesque score - 350 and counting. It almost became the blog equivalent of Bodyline, with some of the ugly nationalism, nastiness and peevishness that went with it. Time to call close of play on that one.
A couple of final thoughts on the Olympics. The response of Australia to what, let's face it, was still a pretty impressive medal haul, is fantastically Ruddwellian - another review. Where should the money be spent? How much money should be spent? Apparently, each of Australia's gold medals already cost A$50 million.
There have been a few calls to go down the British national lottery route, while others will no doubt think that encouraging even more gambling is madness.
Anyway, as we leave the Olympics behind, I'm going to pick up an argument that I made in Australia and the Rise of the Rest:
that the Beijing Olympics provided more evidence that this country is becoming an increasingly muscular middle power.
A few quick points:
- Australia provided a lot of the organisational expertise in Beijing. Leading lights in SOCOG, the Sydney Organising Committee, acted as consultants. Ric Birch, the creative genius who produced the opening ceremony in Sydney, also helped out in Beijing.
- Australia provided a lot of the coaching talent at the games for other successful countries. They talk about wind-assisted sprints, I'm surprised nobody here has yet produced a medal ranking for Aussie-assisted medals?
- Australian architects designed seven of the main Olympic venues, foremost among them the fabulous Water Cube. It was designed by the Sydney firm PTW.
- The Bird's Nest was built with Australian iron ore.
- Kevin Rudd's fluency in Mandarin has unquestionably boosted his diplomatic clout, both regionally and internationally. Whatever you think of the bloke, his linguistic skill has definitely won him the respect of his peers on the world stage.
- The Beijing Games has marked the ceremonial beginning of the Asia-Pacific Century, and Australia is a significant regional player. Bob Hawke and his foreign minister Gareth Evans were the founder fathers of Apec, after all; Paul Keating increased its diplomatic cache by helping to make it a leaders' forum. For the statistically-minded, six out of top eight countries in the medal table are members of Apec.
- Err, that's it.
A good games, with much to enjoy on both sides of the Oz/Pom divide.
London 2012. Can't wait. And guess what, Westfield, the Australian shopping centre giant, is already busy constructing the Olympic village...
I'm 
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