Beijing Paralympics

The Beijing Paralympics are on!

Eight years ago we attended a day of the Sydney 2000 Paralympics. Our tickets allowed us to enter any of the sporting events and venues and we took advantage of this to see as much as we could. Australia topped the medal tally and, unlike during our attendance of the 2000 Olympics, we actually heard the Australian Anthem played (a number of times, as it was). We also saw the interior of the swimming facility with the seats stretching back to nosebleed levels.

But those were just bonuses on top of the sport itself. When watching the athletes we didn't see disabilities, only different ways of playing fantastic sport. Wheelchairs were just extensions of the body, missing limbs meaning just a different style of swimming stroke. It was great to watch and we had a wonderful day.

While checking up on the current Paralympic coverage on the ABC I discovered that cheating is a problem for the Paralympics as well and in some ways to make the able bodied squirm:

Some of the ways that Paralympic athletes "boost'' include sitting on pins, thumb tacks or ball bearings, turning off their catheters - allowing fluid to build up inside the body - while some male athletes who go so far as to tie wire around their genital area.

Ouch!

It's time to go to war!

I've been watching Australia fall down in the Beijing Olympic medal list. The cause is simple. Forget swimming - or as it might be called, the art of not drowning whilst travelling quickly in a horizontal direction. It's the disciplines of war and violence that get you the medals.

Boxing, wrestling, shooting, fencing, archery, judo, javelin, taekwondo. All the different weight combinations, distances, forms of weapons. There are so many medal chances!

And who is winning these medals? Countries who have land borders with outer nations. Nations at war now or in the recent past. China, North and South Korea on the podium in the Men's 10m Air Pistol and China, Russia and Georgia in the Women's event. Russia was invading Georgia when the latter two contestants were duking it out on the shooting range. How's that for motivation?

The problem with Australia is that we don't share land borders with anyone. So what's the point of learning how to shoot, kick, stab, wrestle, spear or punch? The only thing we seem good at is clay target shooting, but that might be a cultural fear of using china plates.

Maybe if roadside bombing was a sport we could compete with the Afghans and Iraqi's. Machete fencing against Timorese and Solomon Islanders is another possibility. We can look at making them demonstration sports in future, but I think we need a solid start as soon as possible.

We need to invade New Zealand. They are close. We can almost speak their language. We've already stolen their rugby coach. And they have an airforce without combat aircraft. As aerial dogfighting is not an Olympic sport the latter fact will not cause any difficulties.

Invade, and gold medals await the victor!