PLANET OLYMPICS: The rig-outs worn by the Australian team for Friday's opening ceremony, which featured garish green bomber jackets, are a "practical reflection of our country's urban sophistication", according to the designer.

Fashion "expert" Maggie Tabberer wasn't quite as enthused. "Awful, awful, awful," she said, "when will we get it bloody right? They looked like they were dressed in barbecue tablecloths and I hope everybody else thought so, or I don't hold out any hope for us." Just how bad were the uniforms? "Even Hungary looked better than we did," she said.

Vision thing ding-a-ling

Few, if any, Olympic competitors have prepared for these Games with quite as much dedication as Tennessee's Kevin Keveaney. "I retreated to the desert for a two-week vision quest, communing with the petroglyphs - man's first TV - and drained my mind of summer re-runs so I might approach this contest with spirit refreshed and eyes anew," he said of the preparations for his attempt to reclaim the world record for "endurance television viewing" at the weekend.

Keveaney joined 21 other, eh, competitors at the NBC-sponsored marathon which began with Friday's opening ceremony and, if successful, was due to end at 10 last night, American (Eastern Standard) time. The current record, as listed by the Guinness Book of World Records, belongs to a German who watched 50 hours and five minutes of telly without a break (sounds like an average weekend to us). The only problem with the NBC marathon? It took place in Florida. We trust Hurricane Charley didn't lift all 22 competitors and deposit them in Athens.

Horse non-sensical

The official website for the Olympic Games is an impressive animal, apart from a disquieting display of discrimination against one sector of competitors in Athens: the horses. Biographies are advertised for "Athletes, Teams, Coaches, Referees/Judges, Horses and Olympic Committees", but while the humans are asked to provide details on their "Nickname, Hobbies, Education and Marital status", and other titbits of information on their lives, no such interest is shown in the four-legged Olympians.

Indeed, the only information the horses had to fill in on their biography forms for the website was "Name, Sex, Year of birth, Country of Birth, Owner and Groom". And "Colour" - how can such a question be acceptable in this day and age? - and "Main Sport" (all put Equestrian, there wasn't a single weightlifter or synchronised swimmer among them).

It was left to members of the British equestrian team to give an insight in to their horses' personalities in the Sunday Times yesterday, with William Fox-Pitt saying that if his fella, Tamarillo, were a human he'd be David Beckham ("obsessed by his appearance and would definitely wear diamond earrings, I don't think Tam realises he's an equine"), while Jeanette Brakewell said Over To You (better known as Jack) would be Wayne Rooney "because he's such a star".

"Although," she added, "Jack is better looking".

Wrestle maniacs

Toccara Montgomery . . . "Fast facts: Cumberland coach Kip Flanik also was her high school coach at East Tech . . . Father, Paul, is serving 30 years to life in an Ohio prison for double murder . . . Majoring in elementary education." The reference to her father is almost lost in the American wrestler's biography, as is the mention in team-mate Sara McMann's details that a man is facing the death penalty for the murder of her brother Jason, who introduced her to wrestling.

The problems of the third of the four-woman team, Patricia Miranda, pale into insignificance next to the above, although she really could have done without her father threatening to take her school to court for allowing her to wrestle boys.

Women's wrestling is making its official Olympic debut in Athens and, it would seem, the pursuit of gold will be a doddle next to some of the challenges the Americans have faced in their lives.

"We all are unique in the fact that we had to struggle," said McMann. "We were not wanted in a lot of wrestling rooms, couldn't find partners, so we had to fight just to become good wrestlers, so that same fight is what's going to make us gold medallists, that grit, that determination, that 'you will not stop me. I did not have an easy road and I'm not going to let you be any kind of obstacle to me. I will go right through you if I have to'."

Lest folk regard her as a monster, McMann added: "Some people expect you to be bigger, to just have two teeth and to be an ogre, but I'm not what they imagined me to be."

Phelps' swim Shady

Since last year's world championships - and again on Saturday when he won gold, breaking the world record for the 400m individual medley in the process - Michael Phelps has used Eminem's Till I Collapse as his pre-race motivational tune. Evidently it works, but quite how we're not sure.

An extract: "You hear it a lot, lyrics, the shock, is it a miracle or am I just a product of pop fizzing up, for shizzle my whizzle, this is the plot, listen up you pizzles, forgot slizzle does not give a ****.

It beats "Gold! (gold!), always believe in your soul, you've got the power to know, you're indestructible," we suppose.