Olympics: One out of the bag

By DAVID LEGGAT and EUGENE BINGHAM

Here's a line you don't get to write too often - the Aussie with no guts.

Say what you will about Australians, but generally they stand tall in the area of giving it everything in the sporting arena.

But "Lay-Down Sally" Robbins has changed all that.

When she stopped rowing about 700m from the end of the eights final, with Australia just off the pace, she triggered an avalanche of criticism from her team-mates, who dropped the one-for-all attitude to give the 23-year-old a serve.

One Australian woman soccer player helpfully added: "If she was on my team I'd have decked her."

Team-mates clambered over each other to find microphones to give Robbins the bullet. Kyeema Doyle, asked if she'd row with Robbins again, said, "I think I'll row single scull for a while".

Robbins has form for this. She'd stopped rowing once before in a world championship race two years ago. She said she'll see a psychologist over her anxiety problem. Her chances of getting in a boat with the other seven from Athens? Slim.

But the true fault lay with Australian rowing officials. Once bitten, they gave Robbins another chance - and got nipped again.

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In the first summer Olympics since September 11, and with American hostility at an all-time high, security was a very, very big deal for the Athens organisers - a €1 billion ($1.8 billion) deal, actually. It was expected that heavy security necessary would cause a nightmare of queues and delays. In the event, apart from the blimp overhead spying on the city, signs of overt security have not been overwhelming at all.

Hell, Dave Currie and Sir Murray Halberg even mistook a bomb check station for a valet parking outfit. The typical Greek inefficiency, dreaded by those of us who knew we would have to pass through dozens of x-ray machines a day, has simply melted away and the queues have been bearable to say the least.