Look, I think our people have done really well and done their best etc. etc. and I'm not having a chop at them.
But it burns my cheese no end we're behind the 4 countries of the UK in the gold medal stakes. Heck, I've even heard some of their gold medallists are English.
That's all I'm saying.
Edit: and here's a blog entry from the SMH today which also addresses this disturbing trend:
The Poms are back
August 20, 2008 | John Birmingham
Okay, all that stuff I said about just doing your best and being proud of even getting to the Olympics. Fuggedabouddit.
This is serious. The Poms are back.
I don't know what happened, where they've been, what's going on here, but every time I check the medal tally there they are, hanging around like a fart in a telephone booth.
I thought these guys gave up on sport back in the 1980s. Didn't Margaret Thatcher sell off all their school ovals to some Euro-Arab investment house to build gas processing plants and car parks or something? Aren't there more pools in Mt Isa than the whole of the United Kingdom? Come on, help me out here. Frankly I don't care where we sit on the tally as long as it's somewhere in front of those gappy toothed sock and sandal wearing bastards.
They've pinched our coaches, our training methods and now, apparently, our rather embarrassing national neediness psychosis where the whole country's sense of self worth is based almost entirely on the fortunes of a handful of athletes. Especially if they're beating us.
I know it must be galling to the rest of the world to have their global sports carnival reduced to the status of a post colonial grudge match between two of the lesser English speaking powers, but let's face it, that is what the Olympics are all about now.
Sorry China, you wasted those billions you just spent. America? Don't worry about your national decline. It's irrelevant.
Tunisia, Togo, Oingo Boingo, whatever. Nice work in whatever it was you won. But let's just remember you're all a support act.
This gig is now all about convicts and jailers settling some old scores in London in four years' time.