THAT GIRL: Great Britain’s Jessica Ennis celebrates gold in the heptathlon.
It all depends on where you are looking from as to how you see the world.
Watching the Olympics through another nation’s eyes has been a fascinating experience.
For all the other Games in my short 26 years – Beijing, Athens, Sydney, Atlanta, Barcelona and Seoul – I have been based in Australia and receiving all the
latest on the green and gold
campaign.
But in 2012 I find myself smack bang in the middle of it all in old London town and despite there being a strong ex-pat community of Aussies scattered around the place, of course the coverage has had a British bias.
And so it should be.
Not only have I come to learn cyclist Bradley Wiggins’ sideburns, the affairs of fellow two-wheeler Victoria Pendleton; the exact age of diver Tom Daley down to hours, minutes and seconds, I have come to form an emotional attachment to them.
Take for example heptathlon competitor Jessica Ennis.
Now to be brutally honest I had never heard of Ennis before
arriving in the UK in the lead-up to the Games of the XXX Olympiad and just as slender was my
knowledge of the seven-discipline athletics event.
However, she was hard to miss upon arrival in London and I quickly learned her poster
girl status – magazines,
billboards, shop fronts.
Ennis was able to live up to all the hype and expectation at Olympic Park on Saturday night by winning gold.
The announcement came via the enigmatic crowd microphone guy at the basketball stadium while engrossed in an Ashes battle between Australia and England.
Australia may have produced an almost 50-point swing to overcome Team GB on home soil but despite this feeling of patriotism towards the Boomers the news of Ennis made me feel quite good as the crowd erupted with excitement.
Don’t get me wrong, part of the attachment to Jess (yes we are on a first name basis) is the fact that she is down-to-earth very likeable and extremely cute.
Another reason is the identification between what Ennis has just done and what Cathy Freeman achieved for Australia in Sydney in 2000.
Carrying the hopes of a nation on the track and delivering.
Beyond the realms of God Save The Queen, which was played six times on Saturday in what was Team GB’s most successful day in Olympic history in more than a century, this same notion was alive in a Dutch beer hall.
It all depends on where you look, to how you see the world as thousands of supporters decked out in orange gathered together in a beautiful old exhibition hall in the north of London.
Apart from native beer and food of The Netherlands being on offer, inside a hall of fame dealing with Dutch performances at each Olympics was proudly displayed on the walls.
And merely in day-to-day travels around the tube people donning all sorts of flags are interested to know how each other’s country is faring.
My aim is to meet someone from Kazakhstan and find out how you win just gold medals – nothing else.
But in the end, it all depends on where you look, to how you see the world.
q Catch London Eye each day in the Mercury and online during the Games; Twitter: @joshuacallinan; Blog: Five rings, an Aussie and a London eye