MEBCAM 2012: The Olympic Dream and Lake Burley Griffin

Following Australia’s Olympic success in the “sport” of sailing (sitting on a boat sipping champagne is apparently an athletic event now), people all over the country are jumping into boats to try and qualify for Rio 2016.  Canberra, not to be outdone in the sailing department, despite being a landlocked territory like no other, is joining in this latest craze.  Canberrans from as far away as Calwell are lugging their rafts, pedal-boats and dinghies out of the garage and into Lake Burley Griffin to train for the next qualifying round on the road to Olympic glory. 

The increase in water-going Canberrans, combined with the capital’s man-made lakes with 50 years of built-up blue-green algae and duck shit, rusted car bodies, decapitated hookers, used syringes, baby poo, murder weapons, homeless people’s urine, drunk people’s vomit, phlegm, shoes, food, cigarette butts, the occasional overflow of sewerage PLUS a general lack of water safety from the populace will no doubt lead to mutant armies rising up to threaten our fair city. 

When Dawn Fraser won gold in 1960, an epidemic of water sports swept through the ACT as well, with results akin to those described above.

And that, dear readers, is the origin of Queanbeyan.

PS.  Don’t bother sending me your stupid fucking diatribe about how sailing is the hardest event in the Olympic schedule and I should be more appreciative of the sailors' efforts and how my ‘negative attitude towards these “athletes” is ruining the Games’.  The only thing ruining the Games are shitty sports like sailing.

A future Olympian in training.  In a Cosby sweater.