Wednesday 30 September
Media Watch:
Centenary rowers star
Satellite Newspaper, 30/9/09
CENTENARY Rowing Club prodigies, Chloe Hill and Alana Hewish, scored the greatest number of gold medals by any rowing athletes at the Queensland Schools Championship Regatta at Bundaberg.
Hill and Hewish continued to show their remarkable standard of rowing by blasting away competitors from all across Queensland.
Together they won the year 11 and Open Double Scull and were part of the crew that won the year 11 Quad Scull with Karlie Jennings and Bronty Morris.
Hill also won the Schoolgirls Under 17 Single Scull.
Centenary Rowing Club director of rowing, Michael Opstelten said 65 per cent of Centenary Rowing Club's athletes, which competed at the regatta, made it into the finals.
All up, the club's rowers finished the meet with six gold medals and six silver medals.
Tuesday 29 September
Media Watch:
Ripples of applause as the slow return of a river ends Dimboola’s water torture
Peter Ker, The Age, 29/9/09
IT WAS the sort of welcome usually reserved for royalty.
Early yesterday, excited Dimboola residents rushed around town for the best vantage points, undeterred by the dark and the chill. But this was not the Queen coming to town, this was something far more important: the return of the Wimmera River.
Five years since it last flowed into this part of western Victoria, the head of the Wimmera has finally reached Dimboola, home of the district's annual rowing regatta for 121 years.
Strong rains have combined with strategic releases of environmental water to revive some parts of the river, which still rates as one of Victoria's driest and sickest.
No one was more excited by the river's return than members of the Dimboola Rowing Club, who have cancelled the past three regattas because of a dry riverbed.
Club president Rodney Lehmann escorted the river through the early hours, walking with its head as it approached town and the regatta course.
"I got a phone call to say it was in the rowing course and it was going to go past the rowing sheds," he said. "It was travelling at about walking pace."
Hopes are soaring that the regatta, notionally scheduled for November 21, may go ahead this year. Club executives will meet this week to discuss the event, and Mr Lehmann believes it now has a 75 per cent chance of proceeding. Rowing Victoria usually decides two months before an event whether there is enough water to proceed.
But RV chief executive Daniel Hutchinson said the water levels at Dimboola would be watched in coming weeks and the two-month rule would be waived in the hope the 122nd regatta could go ahead.
"If there is water, the regatta will go ahead," he said.
River managers said the flows down the Wimmera had been significant, but more rain would be needed for the river to reach the town of Jeparit.
Jeparit has suffered some of the worst water-related problems in Victoria in recent years, and the notion of the Wimmera reaching the town seemed fanciful until recently.
The slow but triumphant march of the Wimmera highlighted a week of solid rains across Victoria, causing minor flooding in some parts of the state, including in the Yea and Yarra rivers.
The Yarra peaked at 2.2 metres at Millgrove, near Warburton, yesterday, well above its usual 75 centimetres for this time of year. This meant 70 cubic metres of water was rushing down the river each second, dwarfing the usual three cubic metres.
Some residents had to bucket water away from their homes, but the State Emergency Service said there were no reports of significant flooding.
The rains were ideally located to boost Melbourne's drinking supplies, with the heaviest falls during the past four days recorded directly over the city's major dams. The biggest dam, Thomson, received 96 millimetres between Friday and yesterday.
Total storages rose by about 17 billion litres over that time, enough to supply Melbourne for more than two weeks.
Despite the solid falls and Melbourne eclipsing its September average rainfall, 2009 still rates as a very dry year and dam levels are still well below those at the same time last year.
Even though rains are now expected to ease, Melbourne Water spokesman Andrew McGinnes said dams should continue to rise this week.
"We expect storages will keep rising . . . as the water makes its way through the catchments."
Friday 25 September
Media Watch:
Rain prompts regatta hopes
Patrick O’Meara, Wimmera Mail Times, 25/9/09
ABOVE average rainfall has reinvigorated hopes of a return of the Dimboola Rowing Regatta in November.
Eight gates of the Winu sera River in Horsham have been opened and water has reached Pimpinio, giving organisers hope that water might reach correct levels at Dimboola to stage the event on the third weekend of November.
Dimboola Rowing Club was forced to cancel the annual event for the first time in its 124-year history in 2006 due to river conditions.
If the event was to go ahead in 2009 it would be the 122nd instalment.
Regatta committee member John Nicholls said it was too early to say whether the regatta was a realistic chance, but if scheduled rainfall amounted there was a chance.
"It is probably too early to say at the moment, but it is obviously a possibility with more rain and we are all keeping our fingers crossed," Nicholls said.
Nicholls said the rowing club would have a committee meeting on Monday night to discuss the latest developments.
He said the club had all but ruled out staging the regatta a month ago, given the lack of September rain during the past decade.
Nicholls said the club would have to stage the event on the traditional third weekend of November, on November 21, but will go head-to-head with the Melbourne Head event on the same day.
He said the return of the event would be massive for Dimboola's struggling tourism market.
"It would be a fantastic boost for the town, it brings close to 1000 people into the town," he said.
Regular regatta competitor Nathan Albrecht, of Antwerp, said it would be fantastic if the event returned.
"It is an absolutely amazing event, and it would be great to see it back in the Winunera River," Albrecht said.
Regatta committee member Michael Salter said if the event was to be staged, the committee would have no hassles getting everything back in place.
"We would love to be back holding the event at Dimboola on the third weekend of November," he said.
"If it is possible the very energetic, hard working and committed committee would get things in place."
Thursday 24 September
Media Watch:
Hooker stakes claim for return to family business
Bridget Carter, The Australian, 24/9/09
A MEMBER of the Hooker clan is set to reclaim ownership of the famous real estate chain, L J Hooker, three decades after the family sold off the company.
Olympic rowing bronze medallist and US-based private equity player Janusz Hooker, 39, has agreed to buy L J Hooker – founded in 1928 by his grandfather – from Suncorp in a deal believed to be worth $67 million.
Yesterday, Suncorp confirmed it was in exclusive negotiations with Mr Hooker to purchase the chain, which has been on and off the market for at least a year and was tipped to be targeted by Mortgage Choice.
When The Australian contacted Mr Hooker in New York, he declined to discuss the deal.
But one industry insider said the fact Mr Hooker was trying to form a syndicate and secure funding from parties in Australia, including financial firm Bell Potter, to buy the company, was "the worst-kept secret in Sydney".
It is understood the agreement to buy L J Hooker, which operates 700 real estate franchises in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. could be finalised by week's end.
Mr Hooker, who rowed to a bronze medal for Australia in Atlanta's 1996 Olympic Games in the quadruple sculls, is the managing director of the Asian arm of the US based investment firm, W P Carey.
His grandfather, Leslie Hooker, founded L J Hooker in 1928, opening the first office in Sydney's Maroubra. As well as being Australia's second-largest commercial agency, L J Hooker is one of the oldest.
The family sold out of the company in the late 1970s before the company went into liquidation after the property crash of the late 1980s under the ownership of George Herscu. It was purchased by Suncorp in 1989.
Wednesday 23 September
Media Watch:
Rowers try new strokes in Hawaii
Ray Wilson, West Australian, 23/9/09
Perth Olympic rowers Ben Cureton and Todd Skipworth wanted a mental break from the relentless grind of training after a disappointing ninth place in the lightweight fours in last year's Beijing Games.
Hawaii, they thought, would be nice.
The holiday destination has activities for all ages and fit young tucks such as Cureton, 28, and Skipworth, 24, would find plenty of adventure.
No fancy leis or pina coladas under the palm trees for this Perth duo.
Rather, the pair, sponsored by WAIS and members of the Swan River Rowing Club, have planned one day in particular for full-on sightseeing.
On October 10 they will be among 1800 super fit men and women who will compete in the fabled Hawaiian Ironman, where the sights of the island are there to behold but so too the sweat in the eyes, the searing pain in the lungs and the doubts in the mind.
Competitors limber up in Kona with a 3.8m swim in Kailua-Kona Bay, then saddle up for a 180km bike ride across the Hawaiian lava desert to Hawi and back, and top it off with a marathon – if their legs are still communicating with their brains – along the coast of the Big Island from Keauhou to Keahole Point to Kailua-Kona.
"This is like a diversion for us from rowing," Skipworth said. "People laugh when we tell them we are taking a break, but that's what we are really doing."
Cureton, who won silver in the lightweight coxless fours at the Athens Olympics, said that he and Skipworth would spend around nine hours on the day to complete the sports feat.
"That's the target," Cureton said. "But it's hard to set goals because in Hawaii anything can happen. It can be 45C through the lava fields and it can be notoriously windy."
Both men qualified for the event by winning replica races in Australia. Cureton won the last Busselton Ironman in his age group in a little under nine hours while Skipworth won the Port Macquarie event in a little over the benchmark time.
Three days after they return, both intrepid trainers will compete in the Tour de Freedom, a charity ride from Esperance to Perth over four days followed by the Tour de Perth, a four-day stage race around Perry Lakes.
Then, they will start getting serious about the 2012 London Olympics.
Tuesday 22 September
Media Watch:
Christine nets medals at transplant games
Knox Leader, 22/9/09
AN Upper Ferntree Gully sportswoman has returned from the World Transplant Games with a handful of medals.
Christine Murray competed at the 17th World Transplant Games at the Gold Coast in August and won gold in single sculls and double sculls rowing.
She also won silver in long jump and finished fourth in tenpin bowling and eighth in ball-throwing.
Murray, 46, said netting three out of five medals wasn't bad.
The bank employee only took up rowing last year in preparation for the games.
She also went to the gym four times a week in the lead-up to the event.
Of the 189 Australian competitors at the games, 45 were Victorian.
The Australians competed against 45 other countries.
It was Murray's first World Transplant Games but she had already participated in two Australian Transplant Games.
Murray had a heart transplant in 2001 after battling the hereditary condition, cardiomyopathy. She hopes to go to the Australian Transplant Games in Canberra next year and the World Transplant Games in Sweden in 2011.
Monday 21 September
Media Watch:
Short notice is no barrier to accepting another honour
Kate Butler, Warrnambool Standard, 21/9/09
IT'S lucky Aaron Skinner didn't know he was getting an important letter or else he would still be waiting for it.
Nestles Rowing Club coach Tom Bertrand nominated the Warrnambool rower for a Victorian Sport and Recreation Association of Persons with an Intellectual Disability (VICSRAPID) award.
After the nomination, he asked members of the Skinner family if they had heard anything further, which they hadn't.
Through a phone call, they found out that Bertrand's nomination was successful and Skinner's invitation to the ceremony must have been lost in the mail.
After finding out the organisation's 16th achievers' presentation night was to be held at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre the day after the call was made, some quick planning enabled Skinner to attend.
He took home the VICSRAPID perpetual award as well as an achievement medal.
"He was absolutely ecstatic," his mother Serena said. "Apart from his rowing medals, he's never won anything this prestigious. "It's all thanks to Tom and his dedication to the sport, which he does voluntarily.
"He's got a good rapport with Aaron and he's never let Aaron's disability get in the way of anything."
Aaron, who has autism, has been involved with Nestles Rowing Club for almost five years.
One of his career highlights came in March, when he won a gold medal at the Australian Rowing Championships.
He received the perpetual award last Tuesday night from Australian basketball great Michelle Timms and Australian entertainment personality Ernie Sigley.
Friday 18 September
Media Watch:
Pags packs bags for Nudgee
Bundaberg Mail, 18/9/09
ROWING: Menancing comments have been directed towards departing Bundaberg State High School rower Tristan Pagliano.
But it is not the opposition at this weekend's Queensland Schools Championship who are focusing on the St Joseph's Nudgee College-bound student.
It is the talented rower's own team-mates.
Pagliano joked yesterday: "They are telling me they are going to break my legs after the meet."
They will want Pagliano in top condition for this weekend's event, because he will be a vital key in Bundaberg's chances of success at the regatta at Bucca Weir.
Together with Mitchell Eichmann, Joseph Graham, Luke Rainer, Pagliano has helped put the Bundaberg team on the map in Wide Bay rowing.
They teamed in the fours to beat traditional favourite Shalom College at this year's head of the river challenge.
"He's been sort of like the captain to that team," the school's rowing co-ordinator Judi Helmuth said.
"He's been a very influential part of the team. "He's a very dedicated young rower and he's not afraid to work hard to get the results."
Pagliano's natural ability and dedication were good enough for esteemed college, Nudgee, to offer him a rowing scholarship, starting next term.
It has been a remarkable rise for Pagliano, who only started rowing for a "bit of fun" two years ago.
Now he trains four times a week and is getting ready to join Queensland's elite rowing school.
"It will be a a bittersweet experience this weekend," Pagliano said of his last race in Bundaberg colours.
"It's been an awesome school and a great environment."
Friday 18 September
Media Watch:
Student sticks his oar in for spot at youth forum
Stuart Roberts, Canberra Times, 17/9/09
Sixteen-year-old rower Angus Moore has been selected to travel to Greece to take part in a youth forum at the original home of the Olympic Games, Olympia.
He was given the honour of representing Australia at the International Pierre de Coubertin Youth Forum after submitting an essay to the ACT Olympic Council, which runs the program locally to encourage young athletes to broaden their horizons and become involved with the international sporting community.
When told of his nomination, Angus said, "It should be fantastic. It's really about meeting people from other countries, seeing what they believe [is] the main focus of the Olympic spirit and drive, and to get their idea of what they feel is the central movement of the Olympic spirit."
An ACT Academy of Sport scholarship holder, Angus has just returned from France, where he won a silver medal at the world junior rowing championships.
He says it's the combination of physical power and technique which draws him to the sport, which he fell in love with five years ago after picking tip an oar for the first time at Canberra Grammar School.
"[Rowing] takes some grunt but at the same time it takes a lot of finesse and technique," he said. Angus flies to Greece today with seven other Australians for the forum.
They will also tour the country and visit the venues of the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Angus said the Olympic Games were all about "the moment", when an athlete, having trained for years gets the opportunity to stand tip and show the world "the culmination of all that hard work and training".
ACT Olympic Council president Robin Poke said the aiin of the council's educational programs was to give young athletes "an allround grounding" in sport.
"Sending [Angus] overseas is all part of giving him an international outlook and perspective, and learning more about what the Olympics are and what they're all about," he said.
Thursday 17 September
Media Watch:
Rowers prepare for state’s elite
Joe Flynn, Bundaberg Mail, 16/9/09
Almost 1000 students to descend on Bundaberg
ROWING: As Bucca Weir is being transformed to house the biggest school rowing meet in Queensland history, Bundaberg's rowers have been on the water preparing to take on the best in the state.
Almost 1000 rowers will compete in 200 events at Bucca Weir in the 2009 Queensland Schools Championship Regatta this weekend.
And Bundaberg crews have been hitting the water to make sure home fans have something to cheer about.
Teams from St Luke's Anglican School, Shalom College and Bundaberg State High School will be flying the flag for Bundaberg at the regatta.
"There will be a lot of good rowers there," Bundaberg Rowing Association mentor John Bigg said.
"But I expect to see a few Bundaberg teams in the finals, hopefully picking up a few medals."
Bigg said Bundaberg's best chance of gold rested with St Luke's sensation Sophie Jarvis.
"She has been performing very well at some big meets," Bigg said.
"She's bound for big things."
Training partner, champion junior rower Karla Dexter said Jarvis was primed for a big meet.
"She has been really focused in recent months and she has really improved," said Dexter, who rowed with the hot Australian team in the Youth Olympics this year.
Dexter has now taken over the coaching position with St Luke's Year 8 rowing squad. Bigg expects big things from them too.
"They performed well at the Central Queensland regatta and the Southern Schools," he said.
Bundaberg State High School will be relying on Tristan Pagliano to lead the way for the Year-11 boys' team.
While Veronica Robinson and Jessica Heiner, from Year 8 will also compete for the school.
Shalom College will have the largest representation of any school with teams from Year 8, 9 and 11 competing.
Led by Rebecca Surmon, the Year-11 girls will be Shalom's best chance of a medal.
"We should make the final," coach Rod Silcox said yesterday.
"And from there anything can happen."
Tuesday 15 September
Media Watch:
Eight added to Sports wall
Namoi Valley Independent, 10/9/09
EIGHT new sporting identities were added to Gunnedah's Sports Heritage Wall in a brief ceremony at Wolseley Park on Tuesday morning.
Gunnedah Mayor Adam Marshall officiated at the induction ceremony before a gathering of family, friends and owners, of the selected eight.
Rugby League internationals John (Bunk) O'Neill, John (Dallas) Donnelly and Ron Turner, and rodeo champion Lloyd Bates, were joined on the wall by sporting stars from cricket, rugby league, cycling, rowing as well as the fields of equestrian and greyhound racing.
Rugby league's Richard Swain and James Wynne, who have both played international football for New Zealand and France respectively, were joined by Gillian Campbell (Cull) Olympic rowing, Peter Cantrell, who played international cricket for Holland and Olympic cycling gold medallist Sara Carrigan.
Kibah Tic Toc and Kibah Sandstone, from Bud Hyem's Carroll property Kibah, both carried Matt Ryan to gold at the 1992 and 2000 Olympic Games in Barcelona and Sydney.
The eighth inductee was champion greyhound Chief Havoc who has also been inducted into the Australian Greyhound Hall of Fame in Melbourne and which was also the first greyhound admitted to the American Hall of Fame.
Cr Marshall said plans were underway to add the late Mel Bates, to the Sports Heritage Wall.
Mel Bates, like his late brother Lloyd, was also a champion rodeo competitor.
Monday 14 September
Media Watch:
Back in the Game
Beverley Hadgraft, Sunday Herald Sun, 13/9/09
Ditching lawn bowls and knitting for rowing and athletics, these Australians are experiencing a second wind in life that's blowing them to sporting glory on a world stage.
Ralph Howard is in remarkably good shape, but all the same, he visits his doctor twice a year. A competitive rower, he explains he does it to make sure he's not about to kick the bucket. "It's only fair to the other seven rowers," he points out. "If I drop dead in the boat, they won't win."
Howard is 91. He's such a fantastic rower, he competes in a team with men up to 20 years younger, one of them a former Olympian. Howard began rowing when he was 15 and, apart from a stint in the army, he hasn't stopped since. "I'm still excited about every session," he says. Even better, in his latter years, he's come into his own, achieving a dream he never thought possible: becoming a world champion.
In his youth, Howard was never picked to race. After his retirement, he decided to fill the gap work had left by committing to his rowing more seriously. Now he competes for the Banks Rowing Club Masters team whose members have an average age of 75.
Howard and his crew have already won one World Masters title as well as all the Australian Masters events. He's excited at the thought of taking the title again at the World Masters Games in Sydney next month and, to that end, trains twice a week. He also spends time on his club's rowing machines. "But I find them boring. It's nicer out on the water, and it's more stimulating than sitting at home, watching television and waiting for your wife to tell you to put out the cat."
Australians love sport. At its most pure, it's the ordinary made extraordinary as athletes perform feats the average mortal can barely comprehend. The Masters are particularly extraordinary. Held every four years, the event attracts twice the number of competitors the Olympics does, with this year's organisers expecting more than 25,000 athletes from around 100 countries to compete across 28 sports. The Masters is open to anyone aged 25-35 and up (depending on the sport), but most participants are aged between 41 and 60.
Over the years, I've seen an Alzheimer's sufferer run a marathon, an athlete with Parkinson's determined to continue competing even when he could only shuffle into the shot put arena with the help of a walking frame, and a 70-something who, when told her relay team desperately needed a fourth 100m runner, agreed despite the fact she'd only finished a marathon an hour earlier.
Then there's Eric Doughty. He took up cycling at 66, after suffering a subarachnoid hemorrhage and being told to exercise. The owner of a local bike shop spotted him out walking and cannily suggested he try cycling, instead. Doughty, now 88, started riding with a local touring club in Wollongong, NSW. "I'd never been engaged in sport before, but suddenly I had all these new friendships and challenges in life."
Doughty's new mates encouraged him to join them racing overseas. At first he thought they were joking, but Doughty went on to become a world champion in several events. He also became the oldest person to cycle around Australia, completing the 14,680km in 96 days, aged 76. At the Masters in Sydney, he'll compete in the velodrome, criterium, 47km road race and 18km time trial.
The greatest fear for any cyclist is crashing. For Doughty, that's particularly prevalent. "I've been carted off in an ambulance a few times," he admits. On one occasion, he broke five ribs; on another, he hit the ground with such force that his upper denture was pushed up, slicing through the inside of his mouth. Then there was the time he slipped on a railway crossing and discovered, a month later, that he was suffering a triple fracture of the hip. At the end of last year, he crashed again (he's still not sure if he passed out or hit a speed hump), but the resulting stay in hospital gave doctors the chance to discover he required a triple bypass. A month later, his wife passed away.
New South Wales Minister for Tourism, Jodi McKay, who's responsible for these Games, met Doughty soon afterwards and was astonished to hear that despite the setbacks, he was itching to get back on his bike to train for his races. She had been toying with the idea of persuading Premier Nathan Rees (a keen cyclist) to enter the Masters. Her response after hearing about Doughty's determination? "The Premier has no excuse."
Another fearless Masters competitor is Queensland's Ruth Frith. Though she'd always had an interest in athletics (her daughter, Helen Searle, was a Commonwealth medallist at high jump and long jump and an Olympian), Frith didn't take up athletics until she was 74 and is still competing in all the throwing events now she's turned 100.
"I'd been an athletics official and was fed up with watching people and minding bags," she explains. "I enjoyed watching the girls do the shot put, so I started with that and, because I'd spent years overseeing Helen's training, it wasn't difficult to coach myself. I qualified for the World Masters Athletics Championships in Puerto Rico in 1983, threw 6.31m and came third."
When Frith started getting bored waiting for her sole event, she took up discus and javelin, later adding the long jump, triple jump, hammer and 100m sprint. "Even at 75, I could still run the 100m in 18 seconds."
Frith's doctor intervened and stopped her jumping when she hit 90. "He said: 'You shouldn't jump at your age. You might hurt your back when you hit the sand,"' she recalls. "I told him, 'Doctor, you've taken 10 years off my life telling me that. I love jumping. "'
Frith is as sharp as a tack and in excellent health, although she struggles to climb the podium to accept her medals. Still, she trains hard - throwing twice a week and weight training, cycling and jogging on the spot three times a week. "I'll keep going until I don't want to train any more," she insists.
Frith's daughter, now 70, will be competing at the Masters alongside her mum. She's also taken up bowls recently, but it's not a game that appeals to Frith: too slow.
A sport that certainly can't be described as slow is table tennis, which, legend has it, was invented in 1882 by soldiers in India. They took the cork out of a champagne bottle, used the lid of a cigar box as a bat and lined a row of books across a table as their net. Dorothy de Low, 98, tells that story to the ball boys who are on hand when she plays table tennis. "I can't run like I used to," she chuckles. "I have trouble dodging my partner playing doubles. I have to watch I don't get knocked over."
De Low, a former over-80s world champion at table tennis, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest table tennis competitor in the world. Her strength, she says, is her quick reflexes. The only thing that's ever let her down is her memory - she once turned up to play a competitor a day early. "I'd be lost without table tennis," she continues. "I'd have to watch TV or knit. I play a couple of times a week if I have time. I love the social part and the fact you can play in all seasons."
She hopes seeing her in action at the Masters will encourage others to follow suit because age, she declares, is nothing. She was talking to a friend recently and, discovering he had a sportsmad mum who was 95, thought she might have found a contemporary to entice into a game.
"Does she play table tennis?" she asked. "No," her friend replied. "She plays soccer."
Just like De Low, Olympic swimming legend Murray Rose hopes the Masters will motivate older Aussies to take up a new hobby. "Most sporting spectators actually want to play the sport themselves," he says. "When they see what others are achieving and the different levels of ability, they realise, 'I could do that, it looks like fun.' Masters inspires people to be fitter and set goals."
Rose, 70, intends to compete in the 3km ocean swim. He took up Masters swimming in his 40s and even at that age his times were not far off those I swam in my first Olympics".
While all athletes obsess over technique, in Masters it becomes a kind of Holy Grail. "As you get older, you encounter injuries," Rose says. "I had some time out of the water with a frozen shoulder and someone said, 'Perhaps you should examine your technique.' I said, 'I have beautiful technique. Everyone loves it, look at my cuttings!' But we had a look and, indeed, I was putting extra strain on my shoulder. So I've changed my technique and made myself more efficient - which you need to be as you age, because you lose power and strength.
"There's always something new to learn. You're never a master, always a student."
For another Masters athlete, her entry to Sydney can't be anything but fresh. Lorraine Bayly, one of Australia's best-loved actors will, at 72, be competing in the tennis, despite only taking up the sport three years ago. With a career that spans everything from The Sullivans to Playschool, you'd think she'd be content to rest on her laurels. But that's not the Bayly way. At 64, she took up the saxophone, becoming so proficient she played with the Australian Army Band. Her latest challenge involves tennis lessons three times a week with her coach, James Farge.
Even recuperating from a broken leg hasn't hampered her determination. "I love tennis. I feel so much fitter and better, I wish I'd taken it up earlier," she says. Her goal is to win at least a few games. "But if I lose 6-0, 6-0, it won't worry me because I love playing."
She's clearly excited. If she can do this, what else can she achieve? She doesn't know, but what she does know is something that's common knowledge to all Masters athletes: "Don't think about your age. Think about what you want to do and have a go."
Saturday 12 September
Media Watch:
Runner to scale bridges
Terry Collins, Central Coast Express, 11/9/09
JOHN Wulff sees his business partner's daughter, Alex Green, as a constant source of inspiration.
The 22-year-old, with mild cerebral palsy, has been selected to represent Australia at the world championships in Poland.
"She took up the sport only 12 months ago - and now she is to represent her country," Mr Wulff said.
"I am blown away at the commitment and dedication she has shown, especially in view of the disability she has."
So supportive is he of the efforts of The Spastic Centre in working for Ms Green and other sufferers, he will take part in the 9km Blackmores Sydney Running Festival Bridge Run on September 20.
Mr Wulff, of Kanwal, has been training for the race by running a 3.8km uphill course as well as doing bare foot grass running and soft sand running at Soldiers Beach each week.
"I recently ran the City to Surf in lhr 41min so I think I'll be able to do the bridge run without problems," he said.
"It's even more exciting to be running for a good cause."
Mr Wulff hopes to raise more than $10,000 for children with cerebral palsy and is calling on the community for support.
For further information or to make a donation to John Wulffs cause, visit www.gofundraise.com.au/john-wulff.
Thursday 10 September
Media Watch:
Australia’s proud sporting tradition unites us a nation
Kim Crow, The Age, 10/9/09
Women will be the biggest losers if sports funding is cut
As a little tacker who grew up dreaming of one day wearing the green and gold and singing Advance Australia Fair on the medal dais, reading Chris Berg's article ''Higher, Faster, Costlier: the price of Olympic gold is too great'' (Sunday Age, 6/9) left me feeling like a preschooler who had just been told there is no Santa Claus.
Berg argues that the Australian Government should cease its support of elite sport and let market forces do their job. The argument goes that strong sports will prosper, the weaker sports, well, no one cares about them anyway and, besides, we can always watch European soccer rather than the Socceroos. No biggie.
There is one thing right in this. Cease government funding of elite sport and all but a select few professional sports - AFL (men's), cricket (men's), rugby (men's) and soccer (men's) - will be left with the resources to train world-standard athletes. We rowers would be boatless, oarless and most certainly medal-less were government funding to be withdrawn. Joining us on the sidelines would be a long list of other sports also reliant on government funding, not least swimming, track and field, aerial skiing, equestrian, sailing, hockey and basketball.
Where the point of contention lies is whether Australians would even give a damn.
Maybe Australians really don't care that Stephanie Rice dominated the pool in Beijing or that the Socceroos have qualified for the upcoming World Cup. In fact, maybe Australians couldn't give two hoots that there even is an Australian team that competes at the Olympics.
I readily appreciate that not all Australians are sports aficionados. Such is the beauty of our wonderfully diverse population. But is our sporting apathy so abundant that not only do we no longer pride ourselves on our sporting tradition, we actually want to hang it out to dry? Such an epidemic of sporting malaise would be a sad loss for our country.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd readily reminds us that much of ''Australia's global standing lies in the fact that we have such an enormously competitive nation on the international field of sporting endeavour … it's part of who we are as a country. I meet world leaders and one of the first questions is how well we are performing in this or that event.''
I liaise with world leaders perhaps a wee bit less frequently than Rudd, but my own international travels have yielded similar results. There are four common things ''foreigners'' tend to associate with Australia: drinking too much, gambling too much, dangerous creatures and being sporty. So I'm personally pretty keen to keep the latter at the forefront of international consciousness.
Our sporting tradition is also integral to how we perceive ourselves, and how we function as communities. Former prime minister Paul Keating said it well when he described the Australian sporting culture as a ''celebration'' that ''transmits so much to this country about what we are''. Active, happy and social.
Sure, as global citizens we can enjoy the brilliance of Usain Bolt and Real Madrid and Michael Phelps. But there is something special, something heartwarming and something inspirational about cheering for one of our own. Something that unites us as a people.
Sadly, removing funding from amateur sports not only emphatically removes any impetus for women to pursue sporting dreams, but it seriously limits the diversity of sporting options available for all Australians. Children who don't find their feet in AFL may as well play Nintendo and help Australia claim the one world title it is in contention for - the fattest country in the world.
Indian children emulate Sachin Tendulkar batting in the streets, Kenyans run in imitation of Kenesia Bekele. Australian children can swim like Susie O'Neill, play basketball like Lauren Jackson, pole vault like Steve Hooker, bat like Ricky Ponting or ski like Michael Milton. The diversity of our sporting heroes, and the wonderful determination of Aussies of all ages, shapes and backgrounds to have a go, is why I'm proud to be Australian. So when it comes to continuing our sporting tradition, I do care.
Kimberley Crow was captain of the Australian rowing team at the recent Rowing World Championships.
