Contents

• Olympic Reflections 
  Broadcast date: 15/12/2000
  
  
  A look back at what hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games has meant for Australia and Australian sport. Are we in any way transformed by the experience of hosting "the greatest games ever"?
  
  JIM FERGUSON, executive director of the Australian Sports Commission; KRISTINE TOOHEY, from SOCOG, who's responsible for producing the post-Games report; and CAROLINE OVERINGTON, Sydney correspondent for The Age newspaper, debate the impact and legacy.
  
  And what has winning a gold medal meant for one Australian athlete? LAUREN BURNS, whose progress The Sports Factor tracked before and during the Games, won the first ever gold medal in Olympic Taekwondo. Lauren reflects on what that win has meant for her and for her sport.
  

• Swimming: A Feeling For Water 
  Broadcast date: 8/12/2000
  
  
  This week, the culture of swimming.
  
  Former Olympic champion SHANE GOULD and marathon swimmer SHELLEY TAYLOR-SMITH both took to swimming as a result of health problems in childhood. They both still feel most at home in the water, and revel in its sensual pleasures.
  
  The same was true of the poet Byron. According to Charles Sprawson, author of "Haunts of the Black Masseur - the Swimmer as Hero", Romantic poets like Byron led the 19th century English revival of swimming.
  
  Historian MURRAY PHILLIPS, who's currently working on a history of Australian swimming, details the development of the "Australian crawl", which revolutionised competitive swimming early in the 20th century, and which was also at one stage known as the "Japanese crawl". And another former Olympic champion, JOHN KONRADS, who learnt to swim at a migrant hostel in New South Wales, provides a few tips on swimming this stroke.
  

• The Extreme  
  Broadcast date: 1/12/2000
  
  
  The Australian summer EXTREME GAMES are being held this weekend, comprising a range of sports invented within just the last ten years.
  
  Sports like street luge, skysurfing and wakeboarding seek to defy the elements of earth, air and water. The attitude around them is rebellious, and youth oriented. And extreme sports appeal to young people precisely because their parents have never been involved.
  
  But are extreme sports genuine expressions of free-spirited youth culture, or are they just as commercialised and media-driven as mainstream sports?
  

• Time For Some Cricket 
  Broadcast date: 24/11/2000
  
  
  An all-cricket program this week.
  
  At the start of the Australia-West Indies Test series, Caribbean cricket writer and commentator TONY COZIER discusses why the once all-conquering West Indies team has lost its edge.
  
  ROLAND PERRY, author of "Captain Australia", assesses some of the 40 men who've captained Australian Test teams from 1877 to the present day - a role considered by many to be the most prestigious job in the country.
  
  And on the eve of the Women's World Cup, in New Zealand, BELINDA CLARK discusses her dual role - as Australian captain and executive officer of Women's Cricket Australia. Belinda was awarded an Order of Australia for her services to cricket this year, and in 1998 was named Wisden Australia Cricketer of the Year, beating the likes of Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh to the title.
  
  Plus, blind cricket. DOUG SLOAN, from the Australian Blind Cricket Council explains this version of the game, played with "noisy balls".
  

• Coaching The Company 
  Broadcast date: 17/11/2000
  
  
  How often do we hear these days that sports teams and leagues have to operate professionally, as businesses? Well, here's the story in reverse. A large Queensland tourism and hospitality business has just undertaken a complete management re-structure - using the Essendon Football Club as its model. And according to executive chairman-cum-coach, PETER THYNNE, there's no business scenario where the footy team model doesn't apply.
  
  Plus, the story of an 80 year old chap who taught himself to row, just so he could compete in the recent Asia Pacific Masters Games. ALLAN GRAY had never been in a single scull before, but was determined to master this fiendishly difficult craft. After numerous dunkings, mishaps and misadventures, he made it to the starting line.
  

• Games From The Dreamtime 
  Broadcast date: 10/11/2000
  
  
  Indigenous athletes are prominent in many "white fella" sports in Australia. But now, indigenous and non-indigenous children are learning to play traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander games. KEN EDWARDS has researched and rediscovered over 70 of these sports, a number of which were played by children at the inaugural TRADITIONAL GAMES FESTIVAL, held recently in Queensland.
  
  Plus, a year out from retirement, Australia's "Wicket Keeper of the Century", IAN HEALY, discusses wicket-keeping, sledging and match-fixing in cricket.
  

• Horse Racing - Mugs & Legends 
  Broadcast date: 3/11/2000
  
  
  It's Spring Racing season, and the 70th anniversary of Phar Lap winning he Melbourne Cup. And he's back on public display at the new Melbourne Museum. EDDIE BUTLER-BOWDON, senior curator and Phar Lap minder at the museum, discusses the enduring iconic status of this stuffed racehorse. And JOHN HARMS, author of "Memoirs of a Mug Punter", muses on the beauty of the form guide, and the multiple meanings contained in the word "G'arn".
  
  Plus, more on children, sport and computers. A world first on-line project is using the seductive power of the internet to get kids around the world more physically active. Staff and students at Craigburn Primary School in South Australia demonstrate how "The Human Race" works, and Director of the project, PETER WOOLLER, explains its rationale.
  

• Cyber Sport 
  Broadcast date: 27/10/2000
  
  
  What's the impact of computer sport on playing and watching real sport?
  
  If you can now play virtual cricket, golf or football on your computer, why play or watch the real thing? Or are the new technologies opening up new possibilities for inclusiveness and participation in sport?
  
  A range of producers, users, and commentators - from an 11 year old cricketer to a retired international rugby player - discuss this virtual world of sport.
  

• Athletes For Sale 
  Broadcast date: 20/10/2000
  
  
  Sportspeople are on the move, and on sale to the highest bidder.
  
  Two-hirds of the head coaches for the Australian Olympic team this year were brought into Australia from overseas. Conversely, the best soccer players Australia produces leave to play with European clubs. And the same is starting to happen with women's basketball.
  
  What's the impact of this global migration of elite sports talent? MATTHEW HALL, author of "The Away Game", Socceroos coach FRANK FARINA, and LEEANNE GRANTHAM from the Women's National Basketball League discuss how the player exodus is affecting Australian soccer and basketball.
  
  And JOSEPH MAGUIRE, British sports sociologist and author of "Global Sport", considers what importing large numbers of sportspeople means to ideas about national identity.
  

• The Paralympics 
  Broadcast date: 13/10/2000
  
  
  The Paralympic Games are about to get underway in Sydney, embracing 18 ports and athletes from 125 countries. RONNIE HOFFMAN details their beginnings, just after the Second World War, at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England.
  
  In 1960, the Stoke Mandeville Games became the Paralympic Games. President of the International Paralympic Committee, ROBERT STEADWARD, discusses how the focus has shifted over the past 40 years, from rehabilitation to sporting excellence.
  
  Shot putter HAMISH MacDONALD, along with TRACY LAWRENCE from the Australian Paralympic Committee and PETER DOWNS from the Disability Education Unit of the Australian Sports Commission, examine the role of the Paralympics in shifting public perceptions about people with disabilites.
  
  And tennis champ DANIELA DI TORO talks about her relationship with her wheelchair.
  

• Country Sport 
  Broadcast date: 6/10/2000
  
  
  Far from the madding crowd and global games, what's happening to sport in rural and regional Australia?
  
  With post-Olympic concerns now about sports funding, a research project is being undertaken by the Australian Sports Commission and the National Farmers' Federation. STEPHEN MUGFORD, who's heading up the research, discusses why some sports are struggling, while others are thriving, in regional and rural communities.
  
  And, as spring is the season for agricultural shows in many parts of Australia, we'll consider a traditional rural occupation that's been born again as a sport - the inaugural World Merino Sheep Shearing Championships.
  

• The Girls' Games 
  Broadcast date: 29/9/2000
  
  
  They were promoted as the Green Games and the Athletes’ Games. They’ve turned out to be the Girls’ Games. More women are participating in the Sydney Olympics than ever before - a long haul since the first modern Olympics banned women from competing.
  
  ANITA TEDDER, co-author of ‘A Proper Spectacle: Women Olympians 1900-1936’, looks back on the early history and controversies surrounding Olympic events for women.
  
  And on this centenary of women in the Olympics, DEBBIE SIMMS, the manager of the Women and Sport Unit of the Australian Sports Commission, discusses what’s driving our perceptions of female athleticism now. And will it make any difference to women’s sport beyond the Olympics?
  
  Plus, Australian sportswomen competing in water polo, beach volleyball, basketball and other Olympic events talk about their own challenges and successes.
  

• Olympic Gigantism 
  Broadcast date: 22/9/2000
  
  
  The Sports Factor continues its Olympic coverage direct from Homebush Bay, Sydney.
  
  This week, are the Olympic Games now so big and so complex that they’ll eventually collapse under their own weight? BRUCE KIDD, from the Toronto 2008 Bid Committee, ponders whether future host cities can continue to host bigger and better Games. And BRIAN MINIKIN, Chef de Mission for the Solomon Islands team, discusses issues of participation in the Olympic Games for athletes from small and developing countries.
  
  Plus, are the Olympic ideals of universal friendship and peace through sport merely rhetoric designed to enhance the mystique and prestige of the Olympic Games? ANITA DeFRANTZ, International Olympic Committee Vice-President, and STAVROS LAMPRINIDIS, Director of the International Olympic Truce Centre, tackle the question.
  

• As The Games Begin 
  Broadcast date: 15/9/2000
  
  
  Direct from the International Broadcast Centre at Olympic Park, Sydney.
  
  The world’s media has arrived en masse at the Olympic site. Numbering 21,000, that’s twice the number of competing athletes. A diversity of journalists, from Beijing to New York, Warsaw to Castries, discuss how they’re covering these Games.
  
  And for the last time before they face their big moment, we’ll catch up with Peter Robertson and Lauren Burns, who are representing Australia in the two new Olympic sports of triathlon and taekwondo, to check on their final preparations.
  
  Plus, on the eve of the 2000 Games, Olympic silver medallist and President of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport, Angela Schneider, makes a startling prediction around the 2020 Games - that Ben Johnson will get his medal back!
  

• Olympic Openers & Japanese Baseball 
  Broadcast date: 8/9/2000
  
  
  This week, Japanese baseball. How has the quintessential American game been transformed to project a Japanese view of life and sport? Baseball's been played in Japan for well over a hundred years, but an American ballplayer once said of the Japanese version: "This isn't baseball. It only looks like it".
  
  Plus, a reflection on Olympic Games opening ceremonies. Since the Hollywood-style extravaganza of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the Olympic opening ceremony has become a competitive event in itself. ALAN TOMLINSON, Professor of Sport & Leisure Studies at the University of Brighton in the UK, asks whether the creed of "Bigger, Glitzier, Better" serves Olympism, the public, and the athletes.
  

• Mixed Marriages In Football 
  Broadcast date: 1/9/2000
  
  
  What happens when you've supported a footy team passionately all your life, and you fall in love with someone who barracks for a different team, or even a different code? Do allegiances get confused? Can there ever be a win-win situation in a mixed football marriage? And what about the dilemma over which team the children will support?
  
  With the National Rugby League Grand Final just played, and on the eve of the Australian Football League Grand Final, couples who've had to negotiate this fundamental difference between them discuss loyalty, commitment and mixed marriage.
  
  A light-hearted look at cultural diversity.
  

• Chick Boxing 
  Broadcast date: 25/8/2000
  
  
  THE SPORTS FACTOR goes six rounds with women who box. What does the recent entry of women into boxing mean for the Manly Art? And for our ideas about women and aggression? At a time when boxing itself is considered by many to be a deviant sport, why are more and more women getting in the ring?
  
  We'll meet champion professional boxer AMANDA "The Cannon" BUCHANAN, fight promoter MURRAY THOMSON, trainer SAM VISCIGLIO, and MISCHA MERZ, amateur boxer and author of "Bruising - A Journey Through Gender".
  

• Fanatics & Addicts 
  Broadcast date: 18/8/2000
  
  
  Once upon a time, sport was an amateur pursuit. Then the players went professional. Now it's the fans who are turning professional. LUKE GILLIAN and WARREN LIVINGSTONE have given away stable jobs and homes to travel the world following the Australian cricket and Davis Cup teams - for the love of sport, the love of travel, and because they believe their support makes a difference to the teams. They're the fanatics!
  
  Then there's the addicts - recreational sportspeople who are obsessed with their particular sport. Swimmer JANE LINDSAY, rock-climber ANNIE TUCKER, and horsewoman NICOLE CLARK explain why they each go to enormous lengths to make sure they get their daily sporting fix.
  

• Oarstruck On The Huon 
  Broadcast date: 11/8/2000
  
  
  This week The Sports Factor journeys to the Huon River, in southern Tasmania. For the past six weeks, a bunch of elite rowers from around Australia have been training in this beautiful, isolated environment, preparing for a World Championship race.
  
  On cold, foggy mornings far from the madding crowd, the crew and coach reflect on what their sport means to them, the sensory pleasures of the water, and the spiritual nourishment they've found rowing on this river.
  

• The Green & Gold 
  Broadcast date: 4/8/2000
  
  
  As big a secret as who will light the Olympic flame in Sydney on September 5, is what our athletes will be wearing when they march out for the Opening Ceremony. Head uniform designer MARIA ITALIANO and dual Olympic gold medallist NICK GREEN discuss previous Australian Olympic uniforms, national symbols, and the green and gold.
  
  And RICHARD CASHMAN, Director of the Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of NSW, looks back to where the choice of green and gold for our national sporting colours comes from, and why they're different from the colours of the national flag.
  
  Plus, we'll check on the physical and psychological progress of two would-be competitors in the two new Olympic sports, who we first met on The Sports Factor last month - LAUREN BURNS in taekwondo, and triathlete PETER ROBERTSON.
  

• Ralph Doubell & Franz Stampfl  
  Broadcast date: 28/7/2000
  
  
  This week, the second of a pair of programs on great Australian athletes and their coaches.
  
  RALPH DOUBELL won the 800 metres race at the Mexico Olympics of 1968, in world record time. His coach was the Viennese born ex-skier, FRANZ STAMPFL.
  
  Stampfl had fled Austria just after the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In the United Kingdom when war broke out, he was interned as an enemy alien, and transported to Australia on the Dunera. At the end of the war, Stampfl returned to England, and coached Roger Bannister to the world's first sub-four minute mile, using his scientific system of "interval training".
  
  Stampfl returned to Australia in 1955, and coached dozens of successful athletes. The most successful of those, Ralph Doubell, pays tribute to the dictatorial maverick, Franz Stampfl.
  

• Herb Elliott & Percy Cerutty 
  Broadcast date: 21/7/2000
  
  
  This week, the first of a 2-part series on great Australian athletes and their coaches.
  
  At the 1960 Rome Olympic Games, HERB ELLIOTT won the 1500 metres race by the largest margin that had been recorded in Olympic history. Elliott's coach was the eccentric, irascible PERCY CERUTTY. Postal worker turned athletics guru, Cerutty revolutionised running training in Australia - most famously by making his athletes run up and down sand dunes. Cerutty was also a health-food nut, he developed a philosophy he called "stotanism", and he was notoriously outspoken.
  
  Cerutty's most famous protege, Herb Elliott, remembers his controversial, charismatic coach.
  

• Norman May 
  Broadcast date: 14/7/2000
  
  
  This week we meet veteran sports broadcaster, NORMAN "NUGGET" MAY - the man responsible for the most memorable stretch of sports commentary in Australian Olympic history.
  
  Australia came very close to joining the USA in a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. And when the men's 4 x 100 metres medley relay began at the pool in Moscow, Australia hadn't won an Olympic gold medal for 8 long years. So when Neil Brooks touched first at the end of this event, all the tension and excitement poured out of Norman May with his "Gold! Gold! Gold!" chant.
  
  From 1964 in Tokyo, and now coming up to his tenth Games as a broadcaster, Norman May shares his Olympic hits and memories.
  

• Olympic Debutants 
  Broadcast date: 7/7/2000
  
  
  Introducing the two sports making their debut onto the Olympic stage this year - Taekwondo and Triathlon. And two Australian athletes who plan to be competing in these sports, whose progress we'll track over the coming months.
  
  LAUREN BURNS took up taekwondo when she was 14 years old, tagging after her brother who wanted to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Lauren grew up to be Australian taekwondo champion, and world number three. Her Olympic campaign began in 1994, when she found out that her sport would be on the program for the Sydney Games for the first time.
  
  Triathlon also makes its Olympic entrance, against the backdrop of the Sydney Opera House and Botanic Gardens. At the World Cup in April, rank outsider PETER ROBERTSON surprised everyone by winning the men's event. It was the fast track to success, with automatic Olympic selection. And suddenly, Peter Robertson feels like a deer caught in the glare of headlights.
  
  Lauren and Peter discuss their fears and hopes, what it means to represent their sport at its first Olympic appearance, and their reliance on family and friends.
  

• End Of Race 
  Broadcast date: 30/6/2000
  
  
  With the completion of the draft map of the human genetic code this week came the announcement that there's no scientific basis for the concept of race. Sociologist JAY COAKLEY discusses what this means for the argument that athletic ability is racially determined - that black athletes are superior at many sports because of their genes, and 'white men can't jump'.
  
  We'll meet an Australian world champion skiier who's no ordinary skiier. BART BUNTING is fast, he's daring - and he's blind. And DAVID BLYTH, president of the Blind Golfers' Association of Australia, talks about hitting little balls with long thin sticks, when you can't see what you're doing.
  
  Plus, a new match-fixing scandal in sport. CURTAIN RODDING won The Sports Factor's Invent-a-Sport competition last year. Since then, it's been wracked with controversy.
  

• History Of Tennis 
  Broadcast date: 23/6/2000
  
  So, who's for tennis? With the Championships at Wimbledon about to start, a history of the game that began in the monasteries of Europe.
  
  From the origins of Real Tennis, through its reincarnations as Sphairistike and Lawn Tennis, we trace the traditions and peculiarities of one of the world's most popular sports.
  
  Tennis took off in a big way in the nineteenth century because of two inventions - vulcanised rubber, and the lawn mower! But where did the weird scoring system, with its loves and deuces, come from?
  

• Sports-Men Behaving Badly  
  Broadcast date: 16/6/2000
  
  
  Do athletes learn bullying, anti-social behaviour though sport? And how might sportspeople manage the contradiction that's inherent in their lives - where the kind of aggressive behaviour that they're rewarded for on the field can get them into trouble off the field? This is the starting point for a study which sociologist MITCHELL DEAN is doing into reforming the behaviour of professional rugby league players.
  
  Athlete manager and PR man MAX MARKSON is a master at turning negative publicity into positive publicity, and making money out of it. So what spin would he be putting on this week's allegations of sexual harassment against cricketer Shane Warne, if he were Warne's manager?
  
  Plus, JOHN CLARKE, creator, writer and star of the TV series "The Games" - the second series of which begins on Monday night - talks about sport as a subject for satire, and making a farce of the Olympic Games.
  

• Football Fans - The Power And The Glory  
  Broadcast date: 9/6/2000
  
  
  The South Sydney ourt case, seeking reinstatement to the National Rugby League, is due to start next Tuesday. Fans have declared this Red and Green Day. But can they win? Long-time Souths supporter and author of "Moving the Goalposts", MARK COURTNEY, gives his view.
  
  The National Soccer League Grand Final is on this Sunday, in Perth. And while soccer clubs in the eastern states are struggling to get crowds, the Perth Glory fans continue to set new attendance records. Glory supporter COLIN JOHNSTON takes us inside the culture of soccer, Perth-style.
  
  Plus, Aussie Rules fans get passionate about their club songs. Many Australian football followers wouldn't normally be caught dead singing in public. But when it comes to belting out the club song, there's no inhibition.
  

• What Price Gold?  
  Broadcast date: 2/6/2000
  
  
  A new study has worked out that every Olympic gold medal an Australian athlete wins costs $40 million. Is it worth it? And is there any evidence that spending this money at the top end of sport inspires the rest of us to be physically active? That's been the theory behind Federal Government sports policy for the past twenty years. But according to KEVIN NORTON, co-author of the study, and SHANE CONWAY, president of Sports Medicine Australia, it's not working.
  
  HENNY OLDENHOVE, who runs the Active Australia campaign at the Australian Sports Commission, details new strategies designed to capitalise on the Olympics as a way to motivate more ordinary Australians to join sporting clubs.
  
  And JAN WRIGHT, from the Graduate School of Education Research at the University of Wollongong, questions whether children's fitness and involvement in physical activity is declining to the extent that some reports and tests are indicating. She believes that motor skills testing of children is biased towards very particular sports skills, and therefore gives an inaccurate reflection of some children's abilities and fitness.
  

• Alternative Media For Alternative Sports  
  Broadcast date: 26/5/2000
  
  
  ... ski and snowboard films, in-line skate magazines and websites.
  
  Top international in-line skater SAM FOGARTY says his sport is generally ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream media. So a self-sufficient media has developed, such as the youth-focussed magazine and web-site established by ex-skater JAMIE DRIVER.
  
  WARREN MILLER has been filming extreme sports in extreme conditions for fifty years. His winter sports action films now represent a five-decade history of sports and sub-cultures on the ski slopes of the world.
  

• Soccer, Soccer, Soccer  
  Broadcast date: 19/5/2000
  
  
  This Saturday's FA CUP Final is the last to be staged in the old Wembley Stadium, under the famous but soon-to-be demolished Twin Towers. British soccer commentator MARTIN TYLER and historian JEFF HILL discuss the romance of the FA CUP and the old Wembley.
  
  And as Australia's National Soccer League finals are underway comes news that the powerful Scottish club, Glasgow Rangers, has bought local team Northern Spirit. Good or bad for Aussie soccer?
  
  And what's it like to own a soccer team anyway? RANIERI PONTELLO owned the Italian Series A club Fiorentina for 10 years, and he tells why it was all a big mistake.
  

• Olympic Science  
  Broadcast date: 12/5/2000
  
  
  From the Australian Science Festival in Canberra this week, Amanda Smith hosts a forum - "The Rings of Science" - all about the incredible diversity of scientific input going into the Sydney Olympics.
  
  Everything from the complexities of designing an Olympic torch that's light, bright and will stay alight, to what the weather will be like in Sydney in September, to what has to be done with the poo from imported horses being brought into the country for the equestrian events. And more, from a panel of sporty scientists!
  

• Active Australia? 
  Broadcast date: 5/5/2000
  
  
  Twenty-five years ago, the "Life Be In It" campaign was launched in Australia. Norm, the average Australian sports-loving bloke, was urged to leave his armchair and his TV, and go fly a kite. The campaign generated, for the first time, huge public awareness of the importance of physical activity on health and well-being.
  Neverthless, 41% of adult Australians still don't engage in any form of sport or physical activity. BRIAN DIXON, the founder of "Life Be In It", reflects on his campaign and on what needs to be done now to encourage inactive Australians to get active.
  
  Plus, what's happening with sport and physical education in our schools? Is there still a crisis? JEFF EMMEL, from the Australian Council of Health, Physical Education and Recreation discusses the pros and cons of compulsory school sport.
  
  And we'll find out about an approach to teaching sport to children called "Game Sense". NICOLE DEN DUYN from the Australian Coaching Council, and IAN GREENER from the Victorian Soccer Federation, explain what they see as the benefits of this approach for getting children to play and enjoy sport.
  

• Engineering Athleticism  
  Broadcast date: 28/4/2000
  
  
  How close are we to the possibility of using genetic manipulation to create faster and stronger athletes? Sports philosopher ANDY MIAH discusses the ethics of engineering sports supermen and wonderwomen.
  
  Plus, the co-mingling of wartime remembrance and sport on Anzac Day in Australia. And the role played by the Melbourne Cricket Club in First World War politics, especially in the highly charged conscription debate.
  
  And the latest in surfboard design - one that's made from bamboo. World top ranking surfer Sunny Garcia is trialling this environmentally-friendly board, which is manufactured in Australia.
  

• Footy From The Heart  
  Broadcast date: 21/4/2000
  
  
  For Easter, redemption and resurrection through footy.
  
  The Sacred Heart Mission football team plays in a Melbourne league for unemployed and homeless people. The league was formed by outreach worker, PETER CULLEN, in response to the boredom and loneliness of people he was meeting on the streets. One of those people was JOHNNY O'CONNOR, who's now the captain of the Hearts. The team, he believes, has saved him from despair. And coach PETER RYAN, a former South Melbourne footballer, says the Hearts team is the love of his life.
  
  Plus, Aboriginal community football in the Northern Territory. There's not a blade of grass on the playing ovals, but the spirit of play is intense and generous.
  

• Dangerous Liaisons:
  Sport & Illegal Gambling 
  Broadcast date: 14/4/2000
  
  
  In the light of the latest in a series of match-fixing scandals in cricket, GIDEON HAIGH, editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia, discusses how and why the game has become so susceptible to corruption in recent years.
  
  JOHN O'HARA, author of "A Mug's Game", looks back at once-prominent sports that were ruined by illegal betting scandals. And baseball historian DICK CREPEAU takes us back to the "Black Sox Scandal" in American baseball, and the symbolic power this match-fixing episode still exerts in American culture.
  
  Plus, safety issues in equestrian sport. After a spate of recent fatalities, Australian Olympic team manager GARETH McKEEN discusses reforms that need to be put into place to protect the safety of riders.
  

• The 'Musical' Sports  
  Broadcast date: 7/4/2000
  
  
  In the summer Olympics, there's dressage, women's gymnastics, and synchronised swimming. In the winter Games, ice-skating. They're all judged sports, where it's not what you do but the way that you do it that matters. But does does the combination of sport and art result in a whole that's greater than the sum of the parts, or just plain kitsch?
  
  Amanda Smith speaks with MARY HANNA, the only Australian to compete in dressage at an Olympic Games; DEBBIE MUIR, who coaches the Australian synchronised swimming team; top young gymnast TRUDY McINTOSH and her coaches PEGGY LIDDICK and MIKE CALTON; and former ice-dancing champion CHRISTOPHER DEAN.
  

• Design Innovation: Good or Bad For Sport?  
  Broadcast date: 31/3/2000
  
  
  Australian swimming is split over whether new full-body swimsuits are legitimate and ethical for swimmers to compete in. The Australian Olympic Committee has taken the issue to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. AOC lawyer SIMON ROFE explains why. Swim coach JOHN CAREW expresses his concerns, and TIM LEES, from one of the companies manufacturing these suits, explains how they work.
  
  And NADINE GELBERG, one of the authors of "Design for Sport", considers the challenges and threats that new technologies often present to various sports, and how sports authorities should address these issues.
  

• The Man Who Would Be President/Nature vs Nurture In Sport  
  Broadcast date: 24/3/2000
  
  
  This week, the man who would be President - of the International Olympic Committee. Australian KEVAN GOSPER, a champion sprinter of the '50s, is Senior Vice-President of the IOC. But he's now under scrutiny from the very ethics committee he helped establish in the wake of the Salt Lake City bidding scandals. Will Kevan Gosper come through unscathed, and make it to the gold medal job in international sport?
  
  Plus, JON ENTINE - author of "Taboo - Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid To Talk About It" - discusses the nature versus nurture argument as it pertains to athletic potential and performance.
  

• Irish Sport & Nationalism  
  Broadcast date: 17/3/2000
  
  
  For St. Patrick's Day, the focus is on Irish sports, like hurling and Gaelic football.
  
  MIKE CRONIN, author of "Sport and Nationalism in Ireland", discusses the critical role played by the Gaelic Athletic Association over the past hundred or so years, both as a cultural expression of Irish distinctiveness, and as a political expression of Irish nationalism.
  
  GERARD ROE, from the Gaelic Athletic Association of Australasia explains the place of Gaelic sports for those of the Irish diaspora. And various players of hurling and Gaelic football in Australia, from clubs with names like "Sinn Fein" and "Padraig Pearce", fill us in on Gaelic sports played Aussie-style.
  

• A Plunge Into Water Sport  
  Broadcast date: 10/3/2000
  
  
  Next month, Hobart is hosting the World Underwater Hockey Championships. National underwater hockey player and referee GRAHAM HENDERSON explains the finer points of this port. He says that from above the pool it looks like water ballet, but from inside the pool it feels like gridiron!
  
  And Australia is ranked world number one in the sport of canoe polo, another pool sport. Players BRUCE TONKIN and JENNY HOURIGAN describe the sport that looks and feels like jousting on water.
  
  Water skiiers around the globe are on tenterhooks. The International OIympic Committee's April meeting will decide if water skiing gets on the Olympic program for the 2004 Games in Athens. MAX KIRWAN, a pioneer of water skiing in Australia, profiles the past, present and future of this sport. Plus, as the Moomba Masters Water Skiing Championship gets underway in Melbourne, past and present competitors give us the lowdown on the event once dubbed the "Wimbledon of water skiing".
  

• Fallen Idols  
  Broadcast date: 3/3/2000
  
  
  This week, the flip side of sporting genius. If, as it's often claimed, sport is supposed to build character and teach useful lessons for life, why is it that some of sport's greatest winners lead chaotic lives beyond sport? President of the Australian ociety for Sports History ROY HAY discusses this in relation to Gary Ablett, Diego Maradona, and others.
  
  Plus, "many are called, few are chosen". While athletes are now competing in selection events for the 2000 Olympics, New South Wales Institute of Sport psychologist JOHN CRAMPTON explains the plans he's putting in place to help pick up the pieces for those athletes who fail to qualify.
  
  Also, cricket biomechanist JOHN HARMER details why he thinks the Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar is not a chucker. And how the endlessly fraught issue of suspect and illegal bowling actions should now be dealt with by cricket authorities. And yachting commentator ROB MUNDLE reports from Auckland on the America's Cup.
  

• Playing In The Zone  
  Broadcast date: 25/2/2000
  
  
  Most sportspeople, whatever their level, can describe a moment when they're performed so well that it's an almost magical, mystical experience. The feeling is rare and elusive, but sports psychologists are now looking for ways in which it may be controlled.
  
  For basketballer MICHELLE CLEARY, one game she played nine years ago remains etched in her memory as her most intense, joyous experience in sport. Sociologist JOHN CARROLL describes that kind of experience as analagous to a religious "state of grace", and a key reason why people play and watch sport.
  
  Sports psychologist SUSAN JACKSON calls it "flow", and she's researching ways in which athletes may be able to reproduce those mercurial moments of flow.
  
  And sports fan JOHN HARMS discusses such moments when he's felt in the zone - not as a player but as a spectator.
  

• Women & Golf/Cycling & Drugs  
  Broadcast date: 18/2/2000
  
  
  With the Australian Women's Open underway this week, Amanda Smith speaks with world number one golfer, KARRIE WEBB, who took up golf when she as just 8 years old.
  
  And while Karrie Webb is currently dominating her sport, the numbers of women who belong to golf clubs in Australia has dropped significantly over the past 20 years. MAISIE MOONEY, the National Executive Director of Women's Golf Australia, discusses some initiatives to change this - like the Executive Women's Golf Association.
  
  plus, drugs and cycling. Ever since the 1998 Tour de France, the image of cycling has suffered badly. Cycling commentator PHIL LIGGETT and French team physiotherapist STEFAN AZZOLIN talk about how the sport is now trying to clean up its act. And phsyiologist DAVID MARTIN explains a research project he's running with cyclists to investigate use of the banned, but difficult to detect, human growth hormone: EPO.
  

• Aborigines In Cricket & Harness Racing  
  Broadcast date: 11/2/2000
  
  
  Why have so few Aboriginal Australians played top level cricket? The very first Australian sports team to tour overseas was the Aboriginal XI, in 1868. But according to BERNARD WHIMPRESS, author of "Passport to Nowhere", a history of Aborigines in cricket, of the three and a half thousand Australians to play frst class cricket over the past 150 years, just 7 have been Aboriginal players.
  
  GEOFF CLARKE, recently elected Chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, is promoting the idea of an annual match to be played between an Aboriginal team and a Prime Minister's XI - as a symbol of reconcilation and a means of developing Aboriginal participation in cricket.
  
  plus, HARNESS RACING. Once known as the "red hots", trotting and pacing has been riddled with accusations of corruption as well as declining attendances in recent years. But this year's Inter Domininion Championship, which culminates on Saturday, is offering world record prize money in an attempt to re-establish the sport.
  

• Adrenalin Sport  
  Broadcast date: 4/2/2000
  
  
  Queenstown, in New Zealand, is the self-proclaimed "adventure sports capital of the world". And people sure do flock there from all over the globe, for adrenalin-pumping activities like bungy jumping, white water rafting, and jet boating. But what attracts ordinary people to the thrills and spills of adventure sports?
  

• Petanque - Aussie Style  
  Broadcast date: 28/1/2000
  
  
  Originating in the south of France, petanque is a game similar to lawn bowls, or the Italian bocce. For members of the oldest petanque club in Australia, Le Club de Petanque d'Adelaide, playing this sport is a way of maintaining French language and culture. Meanwhile, the Feral Aussie Boulists take an entirely different approach to the sport.
  

• Lighting The Olympic Flame  
  Broadcast date: 21/1/2000
  
  
  The biggest secret of the Sydney Olympic Games - who will light the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony? In the past, the choice has often been highly symbolic, or highly political. So who or what might Australians celebrate, or make a statement about, in the 2000 Games?
  

• Summertime Sports Favourites  
  Broadcast date: 14/1/2000
  
  
  Meet Australia's teenage swimming sensation, Ian Thorpe, who combines breaking world records, with school and charity work. And veteran American tennis commentator, Bud Collins. On the tennis circuit for 40 years, Bud has watched hundreds of tennis champs come and go. Plus, a suburban cricket club, which for 20 years has been combining their politics with their sport - with some pretty funny results.
  

• World Records In Sport  
  Broadcast date: 7/1/2000
  
  
  World records, timing and measuring are a unique feature of modern sport. The urge to quantify and measure and compare every athletic feat became a defining feature of 20th century sport. But what happens if and when the limits of human performance are reached?
  

The Sports Factor can be heard on Radio National, 8.30am Fridays (Repeated Friday evenings at 8.30pm).

© 2000 Australian Broadcasting Corporation