Simpering beginning - and it gets worse

By MICHELLE HEWITSON

How have your dreams been lately?

Stomping through mine has been a parade of translucent jellyfish, leaping corrugated iron and dozens of Ned Kellys. This surreal nightmare is presided over by a girl - a simpering, ringleted sort of Australian girl.

Go on, admit it. When Australia's little darling of the Olympics opening ceremony was suspended above the crowds, kicking her little legs, you secretly hoped she was a late entry in the free-style bungi.

We can't have been the only household shouting, "Jump, jump," at the TV - and this days before the crosscountry started.

The odd thing about the Games is that it is supposed to foster a spirit of competitive camaraderie. Which is a cross-Tasman contradiction in terms if ever I heard one. Our team uniform should surely have been those T-shirts which read: "I support two teams. The All Blacks. And anyone playing the Australians."

Now the Australians, according to TV One's lead-in to the Games, are our "cousins." Some cousins!

Let us not suffer under the delusion that the Aussies think of us as their Olympic "cousins" - not if this e-mail from an Australian sheila living in New Zealand is any indication. (Note to self: Give her details to Immigration Minister. Probably an overstayer.)

She babbled: "Our Hockeyroo world champs will thrash the All Black White Chicks with Fern Sticks or whatever dumb name your hockey team has, and isn't it a bit windy for your yachtspeople?

"And ... didn't Mark Todd already compete in the individual event?"

Still, she does rather have a point. Todd's solo circuit means that the horse he rode it on gets, not a medal, but a certificate, which will hopefully up its sale price.

Stack that little commercial reality up against another Olympian solo feat: Eric the Eel (the Flounder, surely) of Equatorial Guinea swam 100m alone - further than he had ever swum before without putting his feet on the bottom - after his lane mates were disqualified.

He floundered and splashed, gasped and puffed. The crowd applauded and roared. The Olympic gush factor was the winner on the day.

Commercialism versus the warm fuzzies? Bereft of our own heart-swelling moments, we'll take anything on offer. Nadia Comaneci was on offer. Holmes took her.

"You know, people in New Zealand, we've loved you for years." Hadn't thought of her myself for years, but still, it did bring it all back. "Can you believe it was you?" asked Holmes. Well, yes, oddly she really could. But it was brilliant. Because Comaneci really does embody the spirit of the Games. Rolled out for the occasion by her sponsors, a fizzy drink and a credit card that allows unlimited spending on Olympic trinkets, she managed to get in two mentions of said sponsors.

And talking of trinkets, a highlight of the Olympic coverage so far was the Tony Veitch item on the "pin geeks." Pin geeks are people who collect, well, pins. These people get as excited over a rare pin as a New Zealander might over a rare medal.

"Why are people so over the top about pins?" gasped Veitch, not thinking to ask himself why he was so over the top about a story about pins.

To paraphrase the Washington Post writer who gets my gold for winding up the Aussies, I have nothing personal against Tony Veitch, but one more item like that and I'll be saving my Olympic hopes for a breaking news story: A Dingo Ate Tony Veitch.

As I say, nothing personal. But since we could be forgiven for believing that these are the Olympics where they decided not to hand out any medals, a girl's got to have something to keep her dreams alive.