2008 Olympics - Part 1: The Pistorius case

Ok, so some of you may not know who Oscar Pistorius is, so here are are the details:
South African sprinter, holds records in 100, 200, and 400 track events. His PB includes 10.91 for 100, 21.58 in 200 and 49.16 in 400m. (Only a small amount off the B Qualifing time set of 10.28, 20.75, and 45.95 - www.iaaf.org)Yet he is not able to represent his country, under a ruling made by the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations)

Oscar Pistorius is known as the "fastest man on no legs". He was born in 1986 with out fibulae, that is the bone in your upper leg. So for his entire life he has had to learn how to fight adverary. But on the 14th of January his fight for making his countries olympic (rather than paralympic) team hit the highest hurdle, the IAAF passed a ruling that said he would not be allowed to compete. IAAF scientist had done tests with Pistorius and it showed that he had a clear advantage over the other athletes who would be competing. The study showed "Pistorius was able to run with his prosthetic blades at the same speed as the able-bodied sprinters with about 25% less energy expenditure" and that "the mechanical advantage of the blade in relation to the healthy ankle joint of an able bodied athlete is higher than 30%." *.

Following this report, IAAF adjusted its entry requiremements.in section 144.2 (e) stating that ANY technical device that gives an advantage is banned.


OK, so that is a quick up date of who this lad is. Now to my point. Surely his cheetahs (as his j shaped running legs are called) could then be adjusted to meet a new IAAF standard that closer resembled the bio-mechanics of the "normal" human leg? Or perhaps there is a precedent that young Pistorius could use? Well, in an article in TIME magazine on Pistorius, an Olympic gymnast was mentioned by the name of George Eyser. Eyser won six medals (TIME article. But also in my search I have found that there have been many other Paralympians hoping to make the mark on the world stage. In looking at many of these case, it really appears that they have no threat to the finals of the events they wish to compete in, little own to their countries team. I think that the IAAF needs to look at this a little more. Perhaps they should try to run around a track with no legs, just some plastic legs, or swim 100m with one arm, or to run and jump a horse with a wooden leg. Perhaps then they will see, what many of us see every day, it is from atheletes like Pistorius that we can gain our biggest motivations. His times would mean that he would struggle to make a south african running, but his heart wants to aim, to dream and to drive for that. But now, through a birth defect, he is robbed of the thing that would hurt the most, the has had his dream taken from him. THAT HURTS!

Links:
http://www.ossur.com/?PageID=3364#Highlights - Pistorius Highlights
http://www.athletics.org.za - Athletics South Africa
http://www.iaaf.org/news/kind=512/newsid=42896.html - The report from the IAAF

Womens Tennis

Ok, so the year is ending and there is we are all thinking about Christmas, the Boxing day sport, the holidays, and the Aussie Open.

Each year, mostly around Wimbledon, the tennis world opens up the can of worms called 'equal prize money'. Both the French and Australian Opens pay a slightly smaller amount to the ladies than the men, while the US Open was the first of the Major tournaments to offer the ladies equal prize money for winning the tournament. However, I would really like to challenge that, because, for me, it is not equal at all, and i like that the All England tournament had different prize money for the mens and the ladies tournaments. Why? Well let me out line it for you.

Firstly at the four Grand Slam events, the men play best of 5 sets, while the ladies play best of 3. i looked at the court time for the Wimbeldon 2007 of the two winners, Roger Federer and Venus Williams.
Williams had a shaky start to the tournament. However, she won all but two of her 7 games with in 2 sets. Taking a total of 642 minutes of court time.
Federer Also won all but two of his games by the quickest way method, but he only played 6 games due to an injury to Tommy Haas. His total tournament time was 747 minutes. So on average he spent 123 minutes per match, while Venus to about 92minutes.

Okay, so this is just a slice of the pie. The arguement can be made that Venus and Federer aren't a good test, however, Venus was under performing early, with two of her first three games going to three sets, and those two took about 2 hours each. However as federer went on his games took longer, meaning more competition. The vibe that I get from both the mens and womens is that the sets are closer, the court time per male player and female player is much different, easily the extra third that the above stats resulted in.

So why equal money. Equity, rather than equality. I would like to see the ladies have to play the full five sets to receive their equal prize money. Will it happen? I doubt it


LINKS
- "Wimbeldon to offer Equal Prize Money" Press Release from the All England Club
- "Wimbledon To Maintain Prize-Money Gender Gap" - New York Times, Robin Finn, 30 April 1999
- Venus Williams matches at Wimbeldon 2007
- Roger Federer matches at Wimbeldon 2007

Phillip Hughes

Ok, so if you haven't heard of him yet, that's okay. Why? Because he is currently playing his second match at state level.
The second youngest player to play for the state (after Michael Clarke), he has already shown that he fits into the squad, with his left handed stroke play. Opening the batting for NSW against Tassie on his debut, he knocked a lazy 51 (only at sr of 48...but opener, on debut, four day game). NSW won the match not having to bat again. As I type he is not out 65 of 82 in his second state match, a one-dayer against the Bushrangers.

So I would like to put it down in writing that i am interested in being able to see him bat some day soon. I think that he may be one of those players who may get the odd shot at the national squad, but will find his home much stronger in the state side. My mind goes back to players such as Greg Blewett, Stuart Law, and Matthew Elliot, all of whom have been amazing at state level, but have struggled to break into the national squad.

I hope that Cricket Australia, allow young Hughes to develop in New South Wales for a good few years before trying him in either the Twenty20, One day, or Test arena. He has some obvious natural talent, and it needs to be encouraged locally for a while before throughing him onto the main stage. That way we may have another Mike Hussey, rather than another Matthew Elliot (sorry Matty, love your game, but I'm sure you know what I mean).

Note: Hughes was out for 68 in his debut one-dayer for NSW.
Also a piece of interesting information. J is the middle initial of choice for the NSW team in the one-dayer vs Vic. with 5 players having their middle name starting with J. While there are 4 on the Vic side.

Links:
- Phillip Hughes Profile - cricinfo.com
- Victoria vs NSW at MCG 28/11/2007 - cricinfo.com

Other links
- Greg Blewett Profile - cricinfo.com
- Stuart Law Profile - cricinfo.com
- Matthew Elliot Profile - cricinfo.com

Australian Summer of boredom?

Are we in for another one of those summers of cricket where we wait for something to happen, and it doesn't?

Australia has just hosted Sri Lanka, and despite one batsman's resistance to the Aussie onslaught, the tests were all over by the end of day one.
While India, our next test opponents, are one of the top test nations in the world, they rarely do well away from home. And, like most visiting countries to Australia, it takes them a long while to warm up.
Could we see four more tests as one sided as the previous test series here? The answer, I fear, is a resounding, Yes.
India are currently hosting Pakistan, and the first test has just started. I personally am holding my breathe that India will be challenged by Pakistan, and be able to use the test series as a good warm up to face the worlds best. However, Pakistan are a team in trouble, and are very likely to just roll over and take what a beating. The test series before that for India was a series in England and one in Bangladesh. While both series were victories (England 1-0 with 2 drawn, and bangladesh 1-0 with one drawn) Neither can hardly be called convincing. The draw with Bangladesh, had there been a little more time, would have likely swung to the Bangladeshis. And the trip to England contained two drawn tests and a lost one day series.

The Indians have, in recent times, been under performers. Gone are the days when a devastating middle order consisting of some of the world greatest batsmen. While Dravid Tendulkar, Laxman and Ganguly take up the middle order, their potency has waivered, they are not the fearful combination that they were last time India travelled down under. Perhaps the reason for India's decline in the Test arena is that they have put too many eggs into the Twenty-20 basket. The middle order has forgotten how to craft together an innings.

Hopefully I am wrong, and from Boxing day 2007 India take it to the Australians, and we are all treated to a brilliant summer of cricket...but I am not holding my breathe.

Baseball World Cup and Aussie sport 1999

I was reading the other day about the fact that Australia lost to South Korea in their final game at the baseball world cup in Taipei. The game was play off for 5th place, leaving Australia finishing the tournament in sixth place. The powerhouse teams of United States, Cuba, and Japan taking the top three places.
The line in the article that I read that caught my attention was that this was the best that Australia had finished in a Baseball World Cup.("Australia finish best-ever World Cup", West Australian 18th November 2007) I was sure we had done better than this, infact I was sure that we had won such a tournament.
So I ran through the details in my head, sure of these facts: The final four was the three powerhouse nations, Cuba, USA, and Japan, along with Australia. The other thing that I was sure of was that it was that year where Australian's national teams seemed to win everything that was available.
So I did some Baseball based searches and found out a few things. It appears that there are numerous "world Cup" tournaments for Baseball...making it a little more difficult to make my findings. So I went for the search to find out the year, which was 1999.
It tiurns out that there was an "Intercontinental Baseball Cup" Held in 1999. Basically, the best of each region play off in a small tournement.
Australia defeated Japan in the Semi-final, while the united states were defeated by Cuba. The final was all Australias defeating Cuba.

This then lead me to thinking and trying to find all the sporting victories that we had during 1999.
Firstly,
Baseball Intercontinental Cup - IBAF (International Baseball Federation
Cricket World Cup, defeated Pakistan - www.Cricinfo.com
Hockey Champions Trophy, both Men and Women - Wikipedia.com
Rugby Union, we won both the Bledisloe - www.rugby.com.au and the World Cup (def France 35-12) - www.bbcnews.com
Rugby League We won the tri-nations - www.rlcup.com
Swimming, Won most medals in world Short course
Tennis, won Davis Cup 3-2 vs France - www.daviscup.com

Women's A-League

So the FFA (Football Federation of Australia) are planning to start a national competition for the women. This is being trialed, for want of a better term over the next few months. Ben Buckley says that the three match, three team challenge will be "a small test event as we look towards building the best possible model for our elite female players."

So how could a future national womens soccer/football comp work? Well as the A-League looks to expand down (ie creating a youth and/or reserve comp to run along the A-League) perhaps the future womens comp should be linked in with this. This being that, for example, Sydney FC play Melbourne Victory. Pre a-league kick off for the match is a youth game, followed by the womens comp, then the top game is Sydney FC vs Melbourne.

Any womens comp needs to run along side the A-league. We do not want to have our national ladies comp turning into whst has happened in the past to the womens cricket squad, where players post match became the stadium cleaners. Being ranked 12 in the world, the Matildas need to have a comp worthy of such a world ranking. (This compared to the Socceroos ranking of 39 - Source FIFA.com)

If the competition is to start next year, which seems to be the plan from FFA, these three games will need to be supported, so, make sure that if you are in Newcastle, Sydney or Brisbane, get along early, and show your support. Plus get to see Australia's most successful national soccer squad.


Dates:
Sunday 25 November, 2.25pm
Newcastle Jets Women v Sydney FC Women
EnergyAustralia Stadium, Newcastle

Sunday 9 December, 3.25pm
Queensland Roar Women v Newcastle Jets Women
Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane

Saturday 15 December, 4.25pm
Sydney FC Women v Queensland Roar Women
Sydney Football Stadium

Further links:
+ Football Australia article

+ "Should there be a womens A-League Competition?" Aaron Kearney 22/October 2007. ABC.net.au

+ A-League

iPod Touch

So I have been lucky enough to be able get a new iPod touch. Man it is cool!
good sound, image, and has wi-fi, so I can surf the net, which is rather exciting. It is missing a simple notes programme, and the ability to add events to iCal.

I purchased in memory of my Pop, he loved music, and worked on the early computers in the beginning of what would become the pc movement.