Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Teach them well and let them .....




I went to my youngest son's sports festival on the weekend just gone and was pleased to see that he seems to have some talent for running. Well at least he is not as awkward as his older brother and Dad.

In my family my Great Grandfather won the Stawell Gift in Victoria, my Father qualified for the Melbourne Olympics, but didn't go, he was too young, and my elder sister was going to be a handy runner too but bronchitis and a boyfriend derailed her career.

As for my Mother and most other members of my family and me when it comes to sports we are pretty good at watching them, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a bit of sporting talent jumped a generation in my youngest son's case.

10 comments:

  1. Well, yeah, there is some good bloodline there. Interesting that your dad qualified for the Melbourne Olympics but didn't go. There must be a story in there. What event? Why didn't he go? Was it injury or he couldn't afford the tram fare? ;-)

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  2. Wow, that's incredible about your fam. I was about to ask the same questions as Steve.

    If your boys do miss out on the sporting talent at least they have their good looks.

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  3. Nice pedigree Scott! My pedigree is less spectacular. My Grandfather was posted for some time in Norway in WWII, and on a day off he and some of the other lads decided to go skinny dipping. Unfortunately some of the local women came down to the lake and set up camp between them and their clothes. My Grandfather, being the fastest runner of the group, was voted the one who had to run past the women to distract them while the others got their clothes.....

    Nice to see that all your hard training is rubbing off on the boys!

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  5. I like your story Bay. It's more interesting than my family's I reckon. But as Stephen and Tesso asked. As far as I know my Dad was a 200m, 400m, 1500m runner at the most. He did qualifying times for the Melbourne Olympics in one or more of those events when he was 14 or 15 years old but was simply too young and my G'ma said wait until next games or they didn't allow such young runners then, something like that.

    Anyways when the next games came around he wasn't able to qualify for some reason or another and that was it.

    My Great Granddad on the same side won the Stawell Gift in 1897 and my family still talks about it which simply show that we have not really done anything in the last 100 years of note to talk about.

    I'm thinking if and when I break 3hrs for the marathon I will be remembered at least until the my grandchildren start using drugs ;)

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  6. Scott,

    .. their father's hell will slowily go bÿ."

    There has been talk in the papers here of Japan seeking revenge against Australia in the Asian Cup. This sort of build up is certainly way better than our previous Oceania opponents like Solomons Islands.

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  7. That's great Robert,

    This rivalry is going to build in the years to come and can only be good for the game of both countries. Although both are relatively new to the game they have great potential.

    I predict that within 50 years one of these sides will win the World Cup. 15 years ago neither side had a domestic competition and look how far they have come since getting thier own.

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  8. Nice story Scott. My family's claim to sporting fame is that my Grandfather once paced the guy who won the Stawell Gift and he also qualified for the Olympic Rowing team but couldn't go as he had won 5 pounds in a running race. So my Grandmother used to tell it.

    As you say, obviously not much has heppened since in my family either.

    Cute photo too!

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  9. A gold medal for your son! Fantastic.

    I'm more than happy, like you Scott, to be not talented. There seems to come with that good fortune, a certain pressure to 'make the most of it'.

    Still, if he's equally talented 'in the head', there's no reason why he can't qualify and run in the Olympics. I hope to read about it some day.

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  10. Yes Ewen

    It is cool to "make the most of it"
    no matter.

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