The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
SYDNEY: There were recriminations and soul-searching in Australia Saturday about the much-vaunted swimming team’s single gold in the Olympic pool, with former coaches and stars blasting a lack of drive and unity.
With the London Games swimming events almost complete there was exhaustive press coverage of Australia’s failure to impress — bagging just one gold from a shock win in the women’s 4×100 freestyle relay, five silver and two bronze.
Former Olympian Susie O’Neill, twice a gold medallist in the pool, blamed a lack of discipline compared to rivals from countries like China.
“What I’ve been hearing… is the work ethic from Australian swimmers is maybe not the same as it used to be 10 years ago,” O’Neill said.
“Talent gets you this far in an Olympics; work ethic gets you across the line… it’s one part talent, it’s four parts work ethic.”
Former head swimming coach Don Talbot said it would take four to eight years for Australia to reverse its plunge to what he described as a “mediocre swimming nation”, blaming a lack of individual drive and unity in the team.
“They seem to be too happy to accept the fact that they’re not doing well. In years gone by an athlete would come back and throw things around (if they missed out),” he said.
Talbot took aim at current chief coach Leigh Nugent as needing to “get tougher” with swimmers and their trainers, also blaming the exodus of Australian coaches to other countries and calling for a stronger team spirit.
“When the athletes are under stress they have to know they are all in the same boat. It brings them together,” he said.
James Magnussen had been expected to dominate the men’s 100m freestyle, coming into the event as the world champion and warning his rivals to brace themselves, only to be beaten in the final by 1/100th of a second.
It followed his sluggish performance in the opening lap of the 4x100m men’s freestyle relay, which saw the Australians finish fourth, despite being talked up as medal contenders.
Magnussen was well off his personal best times and his disappointing showing was compounded by a series of near-misses by team-mates faced with competitors from the dominant USA, China, France and surprise rivals such as South Africa.
Australia’s media warned it could be the first time since the 1976 Montreal Olympics that the once-mighty swim team left the Games without an individual gold, and a far cry from the heights of Sydney, Athens and Beijing.
Australia won five swimming golds at its home games in 2000, seven in 2004 and six in 2008, with swimming traditionally accounting for just under half of the country’s Olympic medal haul.
Sports Minister Kate Lundy said there would not be a “panicked response” if Australia finished well down the medal tally and warned the nation’s Olympic Committee not to automatically expect extra funding as a result.
“What I am interested in is a system that actually achieves results,” Lundy told The Weekend Australian newspaper.
“We have led the way and punched above our weight with (government) investment in the Australian Institute of Sport. We have now seen other countries catch up and the task I have before me is where do we next innovate?”
“It is not just about more money in a system that isn’t doing very much.”
- AFP/wm
Channel News Asia
LONDON: Michael Phelps said goodbye with an 18th Olympic gold medal Saturday, the US men remaining unbeaten in the 4x100m medley relay on a last record-setting night of swimming at the London Aquatics Centre.
In what he has vowed was his final race, the four-time Olympian took his career medals tally to 22 – including the epic eight gold he won in Beijing four years ago.
China’s Sun Yang offered a worthy curtain-raiser to Phelps’ finale as he shrugged off a heart-in-mouth moment at the start to destroy the field and win the 1,500m freestyle gold in a world record time, while America’s 4x100m medley women also won in a world record.
As so often, however, Phelps was the focus.
Breaststroke star Kosuke Kitajima had given Japan a narrow lead when Phelps dived in for the butterfly leg of the men’s relay.
Takeshi Matsuda maintained the lead at the 50m mark of the fly, but Phelps delivered a classic final lap to seize the lead for the Americans and 100m free gold medallist Nathan Adrian was untouchable in sealing the victory in 3:29.35.
Sun shook off a heart-in-mouth moment at the start, when he slipped and hit the water as the other swimmers stood up before the start.
He wasn’t charged with a false start that would have ended his night, and after the public address announcer instructed the crowd to maintain silence, a seemingly shaken Sun joined the rest of the field in returning to the blocks and powered to a win in 14:31.02, bettering the previous world record he set last year at the world championships in Shanghai.
“I thought I was going to be disqualified,” admitted Sun, who said he couldn’t hear the starter properly over the crowd noise. “I didn’t expect the false start and I was very worried about being disqualified.”
Once away, Sun was never challenged as he became the seventh man, and the first since Russian distance freestyle great Vladimir Salnikov in 1980, to win both the 400m free and 1500m free at the same Olympics.
Sun’s triumph in the 400m free last Saturday made him the first male swimmer from China to claim Olympic gold and he earned silver in the 200m free.
Sun beat the water in joy, then covered his face as he broke down in tears before exiting the pool as he followed up on the world title he won by breaking Australian Grant Hackett’s 10-year-old world mark in the event last year.
More than eight seconds back, Canadian Ryan Cochrane took silver in 14:39.63 and Beijing champion Oussama Mellouli earned bronze in 14:40.31.
The US quartet of Missy Franklin, Rebecca Soni, Dana Vollmer and Allison Schmitt won the women’s 4x100m medley relay in a world record of 3:52.05.
Franklin, 17, claimed her fourth gold of the Games as part of the formidable line-up. She, Vollmer and Soni had all set individual world records here.
Australia took silver in 3:54.02 and Japan claimed the bronze in 3:55.73.
Dutch speedster Ranomi Kromowidjojo posted an Olympic record of 24.05sec to win the women’s 50m free, completing a 50m-100m freestyle double ahead of Aliaksandra Herasimenia of Belarus (24.28) and Dutch team-mate Marleen Veldhuis (24.39).
- AFP/de
Channel News Asia
