Two Weeks of Sports Fan Bliss

The Beast and Bolt can dance too

If you’ve been living under a rock the London Olympics are about to get underway this weekend and as you may well have guessed, I couldn’t be more excited. The Summer Olympics and the FIFA World Cup have to be the two biggest sporting events in the world and if you aren’t a football fan then you don’t even care about that one. Even the people I know who simply aren’t into sport have at least some interest in the Olympics.

To name every single event or athlete I’m excited to see would take forever, but I decided to go through several of the things I’m most looking forward to, both from an Australian perspective and also just as a sports fan in general.

First and foremost, you can’t go past the men’s 100m race where the amazing Usain Bolt looks to defend his title from Beijing. For the last 4 years everyone assumed the winner of this race was a mere formality and we just wanted to see what time Bolt would run and how he would celebrate. Not anymore. This race is absolutely up for grabs now after Bolt recently lost his national trials to his training partner Yohan “The Beast” Blake. Blake is also the reigning World Champion, but Bolt was DQed for a false start there.

Americans Tyson Gay and recently back from drug suspension Justin Gatlin (that’s his new full name) will look to play spoiler as well. I still expect Bolt to go to another level and win it, but this race is much more interesting than you might realise.

As a basketball junkie I always get excited to see how the Boomers perform as well as simply watching the American team. There has been a lot of trash talk lately about who would win between the 1992 Dream Team and this year’s team (the answer is the Dream Team and you need to give yourself an uppercut if you even doubt this). The Americans just won a warm up match against their biggest challengers Spain and anything less than gold in convincing fashion would be a shock. Spain, Argentina and France are all good teams as well and will be the biggest challengers.

The Boomers team goes in without our best player in Andrew Bogut and I think our history of making the quarter finals and then bowing out will continue. Hopefully some of our boys can perform well enough to get some international recognition and maybe even open the eyes of some NBA scouts.

Both the track and road cycling will be fascinating as the British hosts look to dominate, as they already began to do in Beijing. Australians have legit medal contenders in most cycling events and I’d love to see us kick it off with gold in the men’s road race, which is the opening event of the Games (not counting the football which has already started).

Everyone knows Australia has great medal chances in the pool and Sally Pearson in the hurdles, but also make sure to watch Mitchell Watt in the men’s long jump. I don’t know how or why, but ever since Jumpin’ Jai Taurima in Sydney we have become serious contenders in the long jump. Apparently white men can jump.

The media and experts seems to be predicting disaster for Australia in the medal tally this year, but I optimistically think we can get into double digits for gold. If the Aussies who are supposed to win, do win, I think people will be pleasantly surprised. Between swimming, diving, cycling, athletics, hockey, sailing, rowing, shooting, equestrian, kayaking, canoeing, beach volleyball and women’s basketball (and I’m sure I’m missing a couple random wins we might pick up like in martial arts or something) Australia has a chance to push 15 gold. I’m going to say 12 and hope I’m short.

I’m sure I’ll write more specifically about some of these events and our medal hopes and results during the event but for now I just feel sorry for all of you with day jobs who can’t stay up all night to watch.