ATHLETICS/Commonwealth Games: James Fitzgerald on why the sports-mad Melbourne public have been enjoying the Games so much: they've been winning all the medals.
Australia's love of sport is not a new affair. It seems that from the first moment people set foot on its golden sands, they have been seeing who can get from one end of the beach to the other quickest. And the only thing Aussies like better than playing sport is watching other Aussies playing sport and, more specifically, watching other Aussies winning.
That is why the Commonwealth Games is perfect for Melbourne, which is surely the most sports-mad city in the most sports-mad country on Earth. It's not just because it gives the city a chance to show off its unrivalled sports facilities, which include the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground, surely now the finest sports stadium in the world.
It's not just that there is blanket coverage of sport in all the city's newspapers and on TV. But mostly it is because the Commonwealth Games has so few other of the world's top athletes competing at it that Aussies have been cleaning up all the medals.
It is as if they devised a hurling championship where Cork would pit their skills against the might of Carlow, London, Meath and Guernsey. And just to make sure Cork would never lose, they would host the thing in Páirc Uí Chaomh.
Countries have been newly invented, it seems, just to boost the numbers for the Commonwealth Games up to an impressive 71 teams. Would you be able to point out Niue Island, Nauru or Kiribati, for example, on a map?
What it all means, of course, is Advance Australia Fair has been playing on the stadium CD player non-stop since the Games began last week.
The swimmers - the women in particular - have only had to dip their toes in the water at the breathtaking Melbourne Aquatic Centre before they have several ounces of gold swinging from around their necks.
Without the Americans or mainland Europeans, the Aussie cyclists have just nipped down to the shops on their old Raleigh racer and come back with a loaf of bread and a Commonwealth Games title. The chaps from the Maldives, Anguilla or Malta never had a chance.
Squash, triathlon, table tennis, diving and lawn bowls have all been happy hunting grounds for athletes dressed fittingly in Australian gold and supporters with their relentless and excruciating "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi!" have been loving it.
Libby Lenton won five golds in the pool, Leisel Jones won four, Jessicah Schipper and Sophie Edington won three apiece and Stephanie Rice and Matthew Cowdrey two each and there was one for 12 other Australian swimmers. That's a lot of airtime for the national anthem. And that's just one sport.
Meanwhile, local TV station Channel Nine and its ironically parochial Wide World of Sports programme has been heavily criticised for showing nothing but local victories and for interviewing nothing but Australians.
"We are being deluged in the most shameful media torrent of self-congratulation, triumphalism and boasting that I have seen in my long lifetime," wrote a John Crawford from Warragul, Victoria in a letter to the editor of The Australian newspaper.
"If there were Games categories for these attributes, we would be gold medal certainties for all of them," he wrote.
Mind you, coming from an Aussie, it just sounds like more boasting to me. I'm sure Channel Nine would talk about the other winners if they had time.
But their coverage only lasts 14 hours a day - they have a hard enough time getting all the Aussie winners in, let alone the Indian guy who won the 50m pistol shooting or the Jamaican who took the 110m hurdles title.
Of course, England, South Africa, India, Canada and Scotland do their best but such is the array of Australian talent that of the countless millions of citizens (or are they still subjects?) within the British Commonwealth, the Aussies always come top of the class.
It is something in their collective psyche that makes Aussies and particularly Melburnians sports mad and incorrigibly competitive.
As Booker prize winning author and all-round Australian legend (and huge rugby league and cricket fan) Thomas Keneally told me: "When the first pilgrims made it to America, they immediately had a prayer service on the beach. When the first crims (criminals) made it to Australia, they had a game of footy followed by a drunken orgy. It explains a lot."
When the Commonwealth Games showcase is over on Sunday, Melbourne will just move on to its next big sporting occasion. Or rather, the big sporting events will move on to Melbourne. A week later it will be a Formula One Grand Prix screaming around the normally sedate Albert Park, then the Aussie Rules season will start where they regularly get hundreds of thousands of spectators out in a weekend at various grounds around the city.
Meanwhile, they will be tuning in, in their millions, to the fortunes of the Australian cricket team - ranked best in the world of course - who are on a tour of South Africa, not forgetting the soccer World Cup finals in Germany this summer (yes, they qualified) and the rugby union Tri-nations, netball, tennis, golf and all the other sports for which they provide world-class athletes.
The thing is that while Aussies have been dominating the Commonwealth Games, often against average opposition, they are still producing genuinely excellent sportsmen and women, people who, come the Beijing Olympics in 2008, will be bringing home a whole different class of gold.
This place may not be providing the greatest poets of our time (hence, "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi") or the finest television stations in the world but if you're looking for someone to kick a ball or swim a river, then Advance Australia Fair.
