Must-see TV? How about getting The Block to renovate our embarrassing ‘Olympic Stadium’
The Paris Olympics are being absorbed on many beautiful levels and they have brought some wonderful reality checks into plain view. For everyone, writes Jim Tucker
Deciding to promote The Block throughout the Olympics as must-watch “reality TV” post-Paris has become almost a comical punchline each night on Channel Nine.
If ever there was a starker way to put fabricated reality side-by-side with the wonderful stories, triumphs and tribulations of real life through an Olympics lens, this has been it.
Give me the unscripted stories of real life and striving every time. Please.
The Block ads are like being forced to gulp a mouthful of untreated water from the River Seine every time they appear on our screens. How is that TV show going to duplicate a BMX racer crashing out of one Olympics with concussion and winning gold at the next?
Or a red-haired underdog upsetting her superstar friend for a freestyle gold and then inviting her to share the top step of the podium so they can savour the national anthem together?
Almost never do you get an Olympics like this … a rush of gold to start, a daily golden highlight as we settle into the marathon viewing schedule, a four-gold spike for the greatest 24 hours in Australian Olympic history and on it goes with a potential water polo gold to come. It’s almost been the perfect rhythm.
You wonder how the admiration that Aussies have struck up for BMX gold medallist Saya Sakakibara can crank up even higher.
Then, you discover she goes out with a French rider and the whole of France is captivated by her story as well.
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Brisbane Olympics chiefs needed to see a spectacular Olympics like Paris as shock therapy to at least consider getting their act together.
The COVID-affected Tokyo Games of 2021 were too mellow in most ways to prompt that response.
Right now, it looks like Brisbane is ready to present 16 days of the Ekka to the world in 2032 or the biggest sideshow alley in Olympics history.
Potential embarrassment is a great motivator.
The big issues are the biggest issues. You simply can’t stage a Games by dressing up a dog of a venue and calling it the Olympic Stadium which is where the stadium debate sits right now.
A 40,000-seat Olympics Stadium on the Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre (QSAC) site with one permanent grandstand and a bunch of temporary stands is more underwhelming than the Brisbane Broncos form right now.
That’s before you factor in archaic bus transport to get there at a snail’s pace and the complete lack of precinct around it.
Stade de France has been a wonderful main venue for the Paris Olympics. The train station is only a slightly longer walk from the action than it is from the Fortitude Valley railway station to the vacant land at Victoria Park where “build me a stadium” whistles through the trees with the right breeze.
Don’t get me wrong. Brisbane will do a marvellous job at hosting in 2032 if the city realises what it needs to be but is also confident in being uniquely Brisbane.
Aussies win swimming medals and Queenslanders win the bulk of them. That’s not rocket science. You have to lean into this in the biggest way possible.
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You’d be working on making the fan capacity at the swimming pool even bigger than planned. It’s not a sunbathing competition so get a roof on the thing too or the next Kaylee McKeown, if we are to be so lucky, isn’t setting a world record for squinting into the sun as she looks up into the sky on every lap of backstroke.
The swimming pool is a cost blowout story just waiting to happen. Even in Paris, they built a way-over-budget Olympic Aquatic Centre but it wasn’t the venue used for the swimming, rather water polo and diving.
The temporary pool set up inside the flexible La Defense Arena in Paris for the actual swimming catered for about 18,000 raucous, cheering, flag-waving fans.
The Yanks are leaning into swimming as a major sport with the pool for the 2024 Los Angeles Olympics to be a temporary set-up inside the state-of-the-art SoFi Arena, home of the NFL’s LA Rams.
It will cater for 38,000 fans. Incredible. The centre-hung video screen above the pool is astonishing in size.
Temporary venues can work. The most spectacular venue in Paris is temporary. It’s the beach volleyball arena built in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
South-east Queensland doesn’t have an Eiffel Tower but the planned beach volleyball stadium at Broadbeach will be spectacular in a different way.
The French have managed to incorporate some unique customs into the pagentry. The ringing of the bell in the main stadium by Olympic gold medal winners has grown quickly into a bonus thrill for the likes of pole vault gold medallist Nina Kennedy.
The bell which has been music to the ears of Olympic fans will peel from Notre Dame when repairs to the famous cathedral are finally completed. What a wonderful way to keep the magic of these Olympics alive in the future of the city.
The three taps of the baton thing before the start of action at venues caught everyone by surprise. The ‘coup de baton’ is a ritual borrowed from French theatre to let the audience know that a performance is soon to begin.
Such additions have given the Games a unique flavour. It shows that the right Indigenous elements, simple and powerful, can do the same for an Australian Olympics in 2032.
When this breathtaking, sleep-depriving festival of sport is done for another four years, we might all be grabbing for one of those family T-shirts worn by fans of 400m runner Ellie Beer.
“Here For The Beer” is how we can all wind down.
That will be far better than thinking repeatedly of German runner Robert Farken over the next eight years as Brisbane tries to get our venue list in the best possible shape.
Where the “Farken” hell is our Olympic stadium?
