W8+ Womens Eight Athens Olympics

Final A Athens Olympics 2004

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• rowing
• remo
• aviron
• row
• rower
• rudern
• canottaggio
• atenas
• athen

[DrFlippin]

Give the Aussie women some credit- for carrying the boat when one of their crew had a mental breakdown; face it, shit happens- and it happens on the world stage from time to time. Most of the crew bit down hard and refrained from publically berating their mentally ill crew member, when it must have been really hard not to. Aussies can forgive- they're champions!.

[jorishermans]

it's not Holland, it's the Netherlands!

someone from Scotland would be very pissed off if he would be called an Englishman. but people from the UK remain calling the Netherlands Holland. (everybody does, but they should know better, for we have the same situation)

[daisybijou]

@boru1982 Hey man, just stating facts that's all - although good point - as a fulltime athlete on government funded scholarships and other assistance, she wouldn't have paid any tax. Maybe they should bill her...*LOL*

[boru1982]

@daisybijou Why do you keep on bringing 'the tax-payer' line into it? It makes no sense. She is an Aussie and I presume she payed her taxes therefore she was fully entitled to use the resources she payed for...unless you know different of course?

[daisybijou]

@boru1982 No different from people jumping on this wanting to crucify the selectors. Agree, no secret - she certainly knew about it. After her collapse, the coach was sacked and left the country, the rest of the crew was publicly castigated by the team's chief, one teammate was suspended, and most of the others were ostracised and left the sport. Sally continued to row with taxpayer funded assistance and official support at the WAIS & tried for the 2008 team-so who really got crucified here?

[boru1982]

@daisybijou This problem wasn't a secret. The selectors knew about. Her teammates knew about. Spectators knew about. The only people who didn't know about it were people who weren't fans of rowing, the very same people who jumped on this and wanted to crucify her.

[daisybijou]

@boru1982 Would it have been more supportive to axe her, instead of spending years &100s of thousands of tax payer dollars developing her right from junior? Just because the problem wasn't solved doesn't mean nothing was tried.  Truth is she got too much support, instead of being kicked to the kerb years before, as you're infering should have occurred. Unfortunately, the 1st step in addressing your problems is to admit you have some-something she didn't do-you can't blame others for that. tx ;)

[boru1982]

@daisybijou You're missing the point - this wasn't the first time this had happened to her. The selectors knew that. The selectors knew that she always had troubled with her fitness or as you call it 'pacing herself'. It looks like they did nothing to fix this problem. This is a team sport yet she seemed to get no support from hers.

[daisybijou]

@boru1982 WTF? How is an 'inability to pace herself for entire races' anything to do with fitness? How do you think they pick olympic rowers in Australia seeing they don't do fitness tests on them - swimsuit parades?

No one blamed the selectors and coach for Paula Radcliffe not finishing the marathon in Athens, this was no different. Yes, those parties played their part in it, but so too did Sally.

[bax0001]

She wouldn't have been the only one in that race that had blown up, however she stopped unlike all the other rowers. Sally could of easily just kept her blade work going until she settled down again rather then simply stopping;.

And for the selectors they have to choose the best boat at the time of trials and evidence showed that she was moving the boat well. Sally would of protested if she wasn't selected.

I am sure there would have been talk behind the scenes to not let her in the boat.

[boru1982]

Listen to the asshole of a commentator at 0:16. He was practically distraught when the US didnt win.