Let's Give 'Em Something to Write About

If you're like me and think that buying both of your city's most widely-circulated newspapers this morning is a good idea because surely the 100 Days Until Beijing supplements will have gymnastics articles in them... save your money and your time.

I bought both The Age and the Herald Sun today. Both had 100 Days features. The Sun's 8-page liftout is basically all about swimming and also features some yob's "100 reasons why the Olympics are great" list which, although it gives two very short mentions to gymnastics, is really just an unsubtle mix of racism, ageism and self-congratulatory ignorance. Their little column of "our medal hopes" has a picture of Dasha doing her side aerial on beam so it's not that flattering. The Age has bugger-all.

Alex Croak, for some reason, was chosen to stand in a warehouse looking crestfallen at boxes of muesli and health bars to illustrate the Chinese officials' ban on countries bringing their own products in. I know this because it was in the MX (Melbourne train network) newspaper yesterday and I looked just as perplexed about the whole thing as she did.

I hope our girls get some great results in Beijing so we fans can all say, "Well we've been telling you ALL ALONG to pay attention to them but no, you had to go and make out like the team only consisted of Grant Hackett, Jana Rawlinson and Lleyton Hewitt. Don't come crawling to us now."

Let's all be grateful for the press in WA. Dasha has written about her torch-bearing experiences and thoughts on the torch's significance here. She is also, surprisingly enough, one of the international athletes profiled at NBC's Olympic website. I like that they remark the ways in which she "sets herself apart from her peers", and this bit made me laugh:

Until 2002, gymnastics for Joura was "just an everyday thing, like vacuuming" but now she truly enjoys herself.

I discovered that Lauren is also there but whether or not my computer's playing up or something I don't know, as no text comes up in her bio...