The Prodigal Son Returns

Yes Ladies and Gentlemen,

After a 3-year hiatus from the Blogosphere, The Falcon has returned in order to oversee the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, like Cristo Redentor himself.

The whole thing kicked off overnight with the Women's Soccer preliminaries - and the Australian chokefest moved seamlessly on from London with the Matildas coughing up the fastest goal in Olympic soccer history, going 1-0 down to Canada inside 60 seconds. Not to be perturbed by going down to 10 players, the Canucks extended the lead in the second half to run out comfortable 2-0 winners. To sum up one Aussie tragics view of the Australian performance – ‘it looked like they didn’t even care’ (NB: not me – if you think I’m getting up at 4am to watch Olympic soccer preliminaries less than a year after watching English football at the likes of Emirates Stadium, Craven Cottage and Griffin Park you shouldn’t be reading this blog!). One thing the Australian team does seem to care about however, and the Falcon has much sympathy with this, is luxury accommodation. It appears Rio’s Olympic village is not up to the usual standards our athletes expect, with gas leaks, water leaks, and do-it-yourself shower curtains causing some athletes to wonder whether they’d actually been housed in Rio’s infamous favelas.  

But all will be forgotten when the Opening Ceremony kicks off at 9am Saturday morning Australian time. While Channel 7 have been flogging a 6am start, they are obviously planning on jamming 3 hours of utter garbage and cross promotion in beforehand – so there’s no need to set the alarm any earlier than 8:55. Anna Meares will carry the flag for Australia in her 4^th Olympic games (2 G, 1 S, 2 B) and Australia will be 15^th into the Stadium in alphabetical order (naming the 14 countries who will come out before us sounds like an all-time trivia question). As for who will light the torch I have NFI – the only member of the Brazilian Olympic team I think I could actually name right now is Neymar – but surely it wouldn’t be very Olympic to have a soccer player light the thing so we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully it’s better than what London came up with when 7 no-name kids banded together as the final torch bearers. I demand celebrities!!!  

The other highlight of the lead up to the games has been a level of anti-Soviet propaganda not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yes the Russians ran a widespread, state-sponsored, doping program but it’s nothing that other states haven’t done in the past. The amount of US sprinters who will be running at the Olympics having previously faced drug bans is laughable (*cough* Justin Gatlin – TWICE! *cough*) and if you really think any of the athletes at the games are competing paniagua then I suggest you open your eyes a little.  

Anyway, enough of the widespread use of drugs by elite athletes – my predictions for Australia? 12 Gold – 16 Silver – 13 Bronze.  I’ll see you back here on Saturday for an Opening Ceremony review before the real action kicks off on Saturday night. 

Citius, Altius, Fortius, Falconius