He is Australian, and he often wears green, but many people in sporting mad Australia don’t know of him. Robbie McEwen is currently setting the Tour de France on fire, winning his second stage and leading in the Green Jersey running for the best sprinter. The sport of cycling usually only makes the news at Olympic or Commonwealth Games times, and occasionally during the Tour de France. However, another ‘minor’ Australian sport, soccer, is still capturing news space with the World Cup nearing it’s finale. If he can keep on winning, maybe he can get the recognition that he deserves and become a household name for his achievements in his long career at the top of cycling.
Related Pages: Tour de France, Robbie McEwen profile, cycling
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Rugby League State of Origin came to Melbourne last night. It was the decider of the annual three match series. 1997 was the only other time one of these matches have been played outside of Queensland or NSW. In neutral Victoria there were enough fans to fill out the Telstra Dome with a capacity crowd of nearly 55,000 people. It would be interesting to know how many people were locals and how many came from interstate. Judging from the confused commuters on the tram on the way to the ground I would say that many people came from up north. There was passion in the crowd – something that has been missing from my recent visits to the Telstra Dome for Rugby Union and AFL games. There seemed to be more Queenslanders but maybe it is because the Victorians in the crowd side against their traditional rivals of NSW (like myself!). It was the Queensland supporters who were the happy ones after the Maroons came back in the last ten minutes to win 16-14, an exciting finish to the game. In the AFL stronghold of Victoria, there has been a recent assault by Rugby League and Soccer to win over support, but I think the AFL can rest easy as a 100 year old tradition of sport is hard to break, and in this sporting mad state there is enough room for more than one sport.
Related Pages: Rugby League, Telstra Dome
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As a famous sports commentator once said, “Too much sport is never enough”, though lately it must be a strain for some armchair sports fans. The other evening, you could have stayed up and watched on TV all the action of the World Cup Football, Wimbledon, the Tour de France, and AFL and Rugby League games. As many of these sporting events are broadcast throughout the night here in Australia, you would have to go without sleep to keep up with all the world sport action. No wonder there are quite a few people who have taken these weeks off work so they can watch sport. I like to watch sport like the best of them, though I don’t think I would use up my valuable holiday time to do it. If I was going to take holidays, I would travel and go and see some of the sport live.
Related Pages: AFL, World Cup Football, Wimbledon, Tour de France, Rugby League
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It is not surprising to hear of another doping scandal in the Tour de France. I don’t think that the teams are just being overly cautious to ban all implicated riders, there must be some pretty damming evidence to take such a drastic action. At least they are not covering up the problem as they may have done in the past. It can only be good for the sport which has a bad reputation for doping. They are showing that they are going to be tough on those who break the rules, even though they may be high profile riders.
Related Pages: Tour de France, cycling, doping in sports
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