View From The Couch
Created | Updated Jun 22, 2003
Nothing is quite so sublime as the Olympics and nothing is quite so naff. Sydney started with naff, or beach volleyball.
'This is not an artificial beach'
the commentator exclaims as a German competitor called Musch ploughs desperately into the sand. No, this is Bondi Beach, the spiritual home of beach volleyball: nothing ersatz about it. Musch, in a blue bikini and snazzy blue sunglasses, is a superb athlete. Her body is a tanned whipcord and it can dive, fly, sail and slalom through sand and sky. But if you put the Queen of the Amazons in a blue bikini and shades and made her punch a bladder around Bondi Beach, she would look silly too. After a disputed line-call, Musch pouts. The two French women, whose bikinis are red and whose eye-shades are yellow, give French gestures of triumph. The band, which revs up every time a volley ends, blares:
'Cellll-e-bray-ay- yshin, come on!'
To switch from beach bunnyball to the dressage is to leap across centuries of taste, style and social class. Our own Mark Todd(NZ), in black satin top-hat and tails, is whispering his mount from delicate trot to elegant canter. Instead of muzak, there is Mozart. Dressage is a subtle and eerie business. The rider freezes while the horse segues mysteriously from fox-trot to waltz to tango as though it had thought of it all by itself. Points are lost for waltzing a millisecond too soon, or if the rider's eyebrow twitches. But Todd's mount, Diamond Hall Red, is appallingly frisky, kicking puffs of sand against the low white wicket barriers.
'He's like a volcano about to go off'
murmurs the commentator, as though Diamond Hall Red had nose-dived into the arena like a beach bunny. It really is too bad, but the crowd gives a round of genteel applause
'which is probably more generous than Todd is feeling towards Diamond Hall Red'
says the commentator, silkily. In close-up we see a picture of elegant despair, that long narrow face dark with disappointment, the lips biting back the bile, the eyes blazing. Todd doesn't look too happy either.
For sublimity, Sydney offers a women's triathlon around its majestic harbour. This is a course designed by the Australian Tourism Board, crammed with views of the Opera House, The Bridge and the Botanical Gardens. It is two hours of refined physical torture on land and sea: swimming, cycling, running and, hardest of all, trying to get your wet-suit off while dashing towards the bike-stands. It is exquisite drama. It builds towards an agonising finish, with the Swiss Brigitte McMahon duelling with Australia's Michelle Jones. It is all sadism and sweat: Jones, a giant with a drover's profile, lollops along behind the European's shoulder like a malevolent kangaroo, waiting for the kill.
McMahon must be able to feel her breath!'
shouts NZ commentator John Davies. Fellow Kiwi Brendan Telfer bursts into panicky alliteration. Can the Swiss Miss blitz the Aussie Battler down Struggle Street? Yes, as it happens. McMahon lunges to victory, and the kangaroo collapses a metre past the finish line. Couch potatoes everywhere slump back into their sofas, drained of all emotion.
In the Olympics, though, pathos is always a step away from bathos. Back in Baywatch, the red bikinis have beaten the blue bikinis. But there is no time to grieve or to exult, because, Ian Thorpe, the Australian star of the Games, has brought his size 17 feet to the edge of the swimming pool. The Thorpedo roars lazily through the water and coasts home to a new Olympic record. He wasn't even trying. A commentator suggests he hasn't even bothered shaving for it! A grin splits the 17-year-old's face, part adolescent smirk, part the sly and shy smile of the star. He knows he's going to win, and win, and win. (In fact A Dutchman, P. vd Hoogenband pushed him into the silver position today in the 200 metre freestyle race! ed)
Finally, Olympic comedy. New Zealand's Tall Ferns take on Poland, the European women's basketball champions. Or more precisely, they take on Malgorzata Dydek, the celebrated 2.1m tall Pole, or may-pole. Evolution is quickly adapting to the Olympics. It produces weightlifters with gorilla shoulders, stumps for legs and no necks at all: they don't have to lift the weights so high. In basketball, evolution has produced Dydek, whose hands are like swimmer's flippers and whose legs are natural stilts. When Dydek waves her arms, she resembles nothing so much as a tall blonde windmill. Three small New Zealanders hurl themselves at the windmill, and bounce harmlessly off. Another hurls the ball sky high towards the net. Dydek throws out a tentacle: schlopp! The ball sticks to it, and in four strides she has reached the other end of the court and thrown the ball down into the net. It is a massacre, a giraffe teasing a pack of pygmies, and all the commentators can say is Dydek, Dydek, Dydek, and wonder if she too has size 17 shoes. We're going to hear a lot more about Dydek. The commentators are thanking the Lord of the Olympics that her name isn't Trgmbrznm-kwzbzinski, like some of her team-mates. Day one ends: in sublimity and laughter. Life is somehow brighter with a Dydek in it.
