Just a disposition match at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney ...
You rove in to the tennis stadium at one end of Olympic Park and watch whatever's up ... The contest of the occasion depends on how long the preceding ones have gone ... In this case it's the 5-foot-2 South African Amanda Coetzer vs. A strapping left-handed Belgian, Sabine Appelmans ... Neither was elite-elite but both were top 10-top 20 caliber ... Yet from these journeyman pros, what an breathtaking doing ... Wham!!! each shot is blasted across the net with breathtaking ferocity, as if from a rifle ... Each shot, each point, each game wrung out with maximum grunting force ... Sprinting, lunging, grasping, always more, more, more ... Until ultimately the wispy Coetzer wears down her bigger opponent.
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Neither player would stand a opening against the eventual gold medalist, a supple, sinewy, deer-like 20-year-old American, Venus Williams ... But this is my most continuing memory of the Aussie Games ... That this "routine match" symbolized the conclave of the greatest athletes in the world ... And that in dozens of sports, with the very best competitors from dozens of nations, the level of achievement is approximately beyond comprehension ... The athletes you see before you are faster, stronger, quicker, grimmer than 99.99 percent of the population on earth.
Even now, eight years later, there are more memories from the two weeks in Olympic Park in Homebush Bay outside the big city ... Aussie hero Mark Philippoussis, the fastest server in the world, hopping nearby like a boxer before his match against the clever Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov ... After Kafelnikov simply blocked his serves back and broke him in the first game, Philippoussis had stopped hopping ... The water ballet offers a remarked of teams of eight teeny girls hopping into the pool, with approximately the impact of a facial tissue having been tossed in, leaving no trace whatsoever as they cavort underwater ... The Aussie team performs to "Waltzing Matilda" and shouts of "Oy! Oy! Oy!, which turn to disgruntled boos as they stop pretty low ... And then ultimately the great night of track and field, when first the aborigine Cathy Freeman wins the women's 400-meters, drawing an great full-throated roar from 120,000 packed into Stadium Australia, and then Michael Johnson, running in the same lane, wins the men's 400-meters so truly he looks over his shoulder near the stop line.
But these Olympics were more than just a sporting venue ... The Aussies, you see, had not only opened up gigantic new facilities, they had opened their hearts. The time of the Games was declared a national holiday, and thousands of volunteers streamed in from across the country to pitch in for free. Need a ride? No problem, mate. School bus drivers had simply driven their vehicles into town ... For the drivers, it's "their" bus, not the school system's, so each one was decorated with the driver's own regalia ... Hey, just hop on.
And in the free day after the end ceremony, what else to do but take advantage of a unique opening in this world ... Do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. Tethered to the rails, up and up we go, twisting up stairway after stairway, hearts pounding as the traffic below gets smaller and smaller ... Until suddenly we're at the top, and all nearby us is the gleaming white city and the green parks and the gigantic blue ocean, with the billowing sails of the Sydney Opera House below as kind of the bow on the package. Good-bye, Sydney, you won't be forgotten.
The Aussie Olympics - Wish You Were There - Glad I Was!See Also : Material Handing
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