Olympic Shorts: Flame roars on despite fire ban

Firefighters are not noted for their sense of humour about conflagrations, which probably explains the tinder-dry response of a Rural Fire Service spokesman to a question about the Olympic flame.

With temperatures nudging 30C on the streets of Olympic Park and well over that in the rural hinterland, NSW is in the middle of a total fire ban.

But the flame roars high over Stadium Australia (Channel 35 on the internal television system shows a 24-hour-a-day picture of it, so we can all make sure it doesn't go out).

In true Olympic style, that flame was granted a special dispensation from state fire ban regulations so the dream could burn on. The spokesman said that the exemption was granted because the flame is contained and elevated and "there is no potential for it to come into contact with any vegetation or anything flammable."

Except, perhaps, the ubiquitous Goodyear blimp whose pilot will be giving the flame a wide berth.

Calling the pot ...


Whatever it is that burns above Stadium Australia for the duration of the Olympics, it is not the cauldron that it's been called in a few thousand articles and television commentaries.

In cartoons, cauldrons are the big pots in which cannibals cook explorers and missionaries. They are the containers witches in which witches brew up trouble (the hags in Shakespeare's Macbeth chanted as they cooked "fillet of a fenny snake in the cauldron boil and bake").

In short, a cauldron is something that sits on a flame. It's long been a metaphor for intense athletic contest ("the cauldron of competition"), but the thing the torch ignited on Friday night is a flame.

Boxer praised


East Timorese boxer Victor Ramos, pummelled out of his first-round boxing match on Sunday by a taller and younger opponent, got a hand-delivered letter of congratulations from the boss yesterday.

Ramos, one of four East Timorese competing bravely but vainly as individual athletes at these Games, works as a security guard in the UN transitional administration in the strife-torn nation. The letter, from UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, was personally delivered by Mr Annan's chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, who was briefly in Sydney on the way to Dili.

A spokesman for the Timorese group said that the gist of the letter was that, through athletes like them, the best ideals of the Olympics and United Nations could be advanced.

Whale of a time


Olympic organisers get a big worry off their minds every morning. At first light, two officers from Australia's National Parks and Wildlife Service fly up and down the coast near Sydney to see if there are any migrating whales in the area.

So far, there have been no sightings. There is provision in the sailing programme to reschedule races should a whale gatecrash events. "The rule is that whales have right of way over everything else on the water. It's illegal to go within 50m of them," said an official.

Plenty of pluck

Geese by the score have been plucked naked to supply the appetites of badminton players.

The athletes have been averaging 40 shuttlecocks, which are made of goose feathers, per match.

Each shuttle requires three birds because a wing has six feathers and manufacturers cannot mix those from the left and right wings, with their different curvatures.

Shuttles consist of a cork base covered in a thin layer of leather with 16 goose feathers attached to the base.

Southern exposure

Women's water polo players are showing more of themselves than planned as the sport makes its debut at the Sydney Olympics.

Their thin, elastic bathing suits are being torn by the dozen, though the European teams seem to be more willing to play on topless, instead of wasting time changing into a new costume.