Australia’s won 12 gold medals at the Olympics, and it’s not lost on me that women are responsible for 10 of these.
In fact, the green and gold female contingent tops the medal tally, above and beyond any other country’s women – aside from the United States who gained their 11th this morning.
That’s reason to celebrate. More female gold than China, France, Great Britain. All of them.
And many of them flanked on the dias by Americans, finally getting a taste of what every other country on the planet thinks of their Star Spangled Banner.
I hope Advanced Australia Fair is humming in their heads as they mosey around the village thinking which buffet they might tackle to drown their sorrows for such a dismal performance.
Sure, the Americans will get plenty more gold medals before the Olympics is finished, but let’s rub it in while we can.
Our allied partners have probably even had time to learn the first verse by now – “advay-anced Orstrayl-yar fayer”.
Call me a bad winner if you will, but this is the Olympics.
Sure, everyone should be celebrated, but it’s not primary school where everyone gets a ribbon. Their ribbon was the airfare. This is the big time, athletes there to show who’s best in the world.
The Americans might have laughable politics, and their swagger might be a bit much for us laid-back Aussies.
It’s that attitude that’s got them wondering why every other country’s got a dose of the tall poppies and wants so badly to knock them off.
The other night I found myself cheering for a guy from a country I’d never heard of, just because they were up against an American.
“We didn’t come for the silver. We came for the gold,” swimming coach Laurie Lawrence famously said.
Granted, now is the time at the Olympics that we find our Aussies are much better at swimming and riding and rowing than we are at other stuff like athletics and boxing.
It’s where other nations come into their own. Places where children haven’t tied themselves to an X-box. Places where skipping and hopscotch are still real life activities.
Let’s not be disparaging to the time any athlete puts in to become elite.
And it’s fair to say we’re not totally done with yet.
We’ll win a team gold, we might find we’re pretty good at jumping, and we’ll give at least one boxing gold medal a nudge.
But for some time now, running just isn’t our thing.
Too many couch potatoes sitting around munching on a bowl of Samboys, finding more time in the wee hours of Olympic vision to chop up cheese and cabanossi than we do to prepare for an honest day’s work.
And you guessed it, most of them men.
Which brings me back to the point.
Australian men are again letting down the team.
Two, just two gold. If it was up to the men, we’d be sitting outside the top 10 countries in the world. Last I looked, our men were ranked 11th in the world. Our women second to those nasty American types.
It’s a stark difference.
So, we’re learning a lot about ourselves.
We’re learning that it’s probably time to realise that Australian women, the same ones who’ve taken the responsibility for years, are more capable than men. Full stop.
Wanda keeps reminding me of this when she finds I’ve accidentally left the salt shaker in the fridge.
It’s hard to disagree that more women should find themselves at the top of the corporate ladder, managing our blue chip businesses, because let’s face it, the evidence is too strong to ignore. Men are great at messing things up.
They’re spending too much time learning what to put in a toastie than they are managing our country.
More women business leaders, I say. More women politicians. More women making decisions.
Hey Wanda, where should we go for dinner tonight? I know you’ll be far more likely to get it right than this silly old testosterone-blown fool.
