To say that Australians like sport is like
saying Orson Welles was a tad chubby. Since I arrived here, I have felt guilty
just walking down the street. Regardless of the time or place, I stumble across
people riding a bike or running. If they were to hold up a bank (or steal a
bike), the robbers would wear tracksuits to camouflage their escape.
It’s not only caught my attention how much
they play sports, but also how differently they play to them compared to us in
Spain. Let me explain:
On the hand, there’s the tendency to take
sport very seriously here. You see a lot of people exercising alongside their
personal trainers. And regardless of the sport (badminton, surfing, beach
volleyball, ping pong), there are classes open to all levels for those who don’t know how to
play and want to learn, and then with a speedy leap to competitions. And when I say these classes are open, I mean
that if you decide on a Tuesday that you want to learn one of these sports, you
go to the place, you pay and you learn. As simple as that.
However, at the same time, there are lots
of initiatives aimed at promoting integration though sport. An then there are sports
that are specifically classed as “playing just for fun” (it seems that the
others sports are not). I’m especially intrigued by the concept of Sub Football
whereby football matches are played in the park and at least 40% of the players
have to be women.
And
this brings me to the third thing that has caught my attention: The number of
women who play sports is far greater than in other place I’ve visited. You see
as many men out running as women. When it comes to rowing (I live beside the
river)-the women outnumber the men. Perhaps more men ride bikes, but there
seems to be equal participation in rugby. It makes me wonder if it is the cause
or effect of what I mentioned in the last point.
Finally, the range of sports is
startling. Talking about group sports,
you’ll see everything in the same park (1). From the easy to follow cricket,
football to touch football (where instead of tackling, the players touch their
opponents to stop them), athletic groups, people that box without hitting each
other and finally a weird kind of petanque (bowls).
So I can therefore confirm what outside
appearances indicate: no other country has been awarded as many Olympic medals
per capita or has a greater density of sporting federations. Well perhaps
that’s cultural but the huge sporting grounds that they have and the cheap cost
of using them surely helps (for an expensive country, sports are cheap)
(1) I have barely watched Aussie Rules.
I watched it just the one time ( I stayed there for 2 hours) in a park
in Sydney. Also due to the fact that it was off-season, I wasn’t able to watch”
real games” much less talk about them. But anyway here’s a quick plug for the
sport.
