December  2001 

• Doing It!
  21/12/2001
  Is it better to play a sport badly, or watch others do it well? Players of mid-week ladies tennis and D-grade park cricket, who've been playing badly for years, offer their views. Plus, a group of older women who've taken up figure skating. Not the easiest of sports to tackle when you're getting on in years, but these women are undaunted!

• Child's Play
  14/12/2001
  A report released this week says that 12% of Australian children are now obese. A major part of the problem is lack of exercise. But how do we enthuse young people to be physically active, when a whole range of social and economic factors are getting in the way? And what new approaches are being taken to the teaching of sport and physical education? 

• Gene Doping
  07/12/2001
  Feared to be the latest threat to sport, GENE DOPING represents a whole new era in artificial performance enhancement. The indications are that gene doping will be a highly effective way of improving sports performance, and it will be impossible to detect in practice. So, what are sports authorities doing to protect the integrity of sport from this latest incursion?

• Australian Soccer
  - Hope Springs Eternal
  30/11/2001
  In the wake of the Socceroos' failed attempt to reach the World Cup finals (again), where to for Australian soccer now? Soccer Australia Chairman Ian Knop, the Professional Footballers' Association's Brendan Schwab, and Football Advocates' Network co-ordinator Sam Crozier give their views.
  
  And, as a diversion to disappointment, this weekend's Davis Cup final - played on Australian lawn for the first time in 15 years. What place does this somewhat anachronistic national teams competition have in the ruggedly individualistic, big money world of professional tennis?

• Sporting Biographies
  23/11/2001
  What are the particular challenges of writing sports biography, of
  bringing to life the accomplishments and significance of champions of the
  past? 

• Ghost Writers
  16/11/2001
  The great anti-hero of Australian sport, "Warwick Todd", says it's the responsibility of all cricketers to publish an autobiography...or a series of disjointed anecdotes cobbled together by a ghost writer. 

• Warrior Sports
  09/11/2001
  If you were hopeless at ball games as a child, if you're not a team player, then ARCHERY and FENCING might be the sports for you. Especially if you still harbour a fondness for swashbuckling movie matinee heroes like Robin Hood, Zorro, or The Three Musketeers. 

• Political Football
  02/11/2001
  In Brisbane, a soccer team called 'Tiger 11' is made up entirely of asylum seekers, the majority of whom fled Afghanistan, persecuted by the Taliban. Sport has connected them to the Australian community, but for how long? Recent changes to immigration legislation, and since September 11, an association with the terror they ran from, have left them with uncertain futures. 

• Beazley and Howard
  - Politics and Sport
  26/10/2001
  Sport is a theme that has loomed large in the lives of both men who would be Prime Minister after the November 10 election.

• Insuring The Future Of Sport
  19/10/2001
  International sport is suddenly not a touchstone for humanity's common values but instead an arena of suspicion. Insurance companies have abandoned the two biggest sporting events in the world, the Olympics and the Soccer World Cup, saying September 11 makes them an unacceptable risk. 

• Counterculture Cricket
  12/10/2001
  What happens when the night creatures come out to play in the sunshine? Brisbane's fertile band scene, which produced ARIA favourites Powderfinger and many others, has also spawned a fiercely contested winter cricket competition. 

• A Symphony For Long Jump
  05/10/2001
  A sizzling sprint on the track and a stunning violin solo have a lot in common. Both are feats of athleticism which share a particular psychology. 

• Best & Fairest
  28/09/2001
  Norm Smith and Clive Churchill. After the final hooter in this weekend's football Grand Finals, medals bearing their names will be handed to the most outstanding player from each game. But who were Smith and Churchill? Are they still relevant to the games of Australian Rules and Rugby League? And is it missing the point to single out individual performances in team sports? 

• Sports Sponsorship Collapse
  21/09/2001
  How is the collapse of Ansett Airlines affecting Australian sport? Ansett has been a major sponsor of sport in this country, across the football codes, cricket, basketball, hockey, surf lifesaving, athletics. SARAH LUCAS, from Sport Industry Australia, discusses the impact the Ansett collapse will have on all these sports and events. And JAMES PATERSON, from Sponsorship Information Services, considers the wider impact of economic downturn on sports sponsorship.

• Sport's Sacred Sites
  14/09/2001
  On the first anniversary of the Sydney Games, attempts are underway to re-ignite the spirit of Sydney's Olympic Park. RICHARD CASHMAN from the Olympic Studies Centre in Sydney considers whether the celebratory re-lighting of the Olympic cauldron, and the re-development of the site, can restore a symbolic significance to what has now become a forlorn and forgotten place. 

• Abused Bodies
  07/09/2001
  The highly toned, lean and strong bodies of athletes present an image of peak physical fitness and health. But that appearance may be masking some seriously unhealthy practices.

• The Mystery of the Racing Pigeon
  31/08/2001
  The sport of pigeon racing is built around a central mystery: the strange homing instinct of the pigeon. Nobody really knows for sure how or why pigeons can be released hundreds of miles from their lofts, and will always try to find their way home. But one thing's for sure, the sport wouldn't exist unless they did. 

• Volunteers In Sport
  24/08/2001
  Volunteers in sport. What's been the impact of the hugely successful Olympic and Paralympic volunteer effort? 

• 1868 Aboriginal Cricket Team
  17/08/2001
  A young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cricket team is about to take to the field at Lord's, in London. And on The Sports Factor, we remember the very first Australian cricket team that played at Lord's, in 1868. This was also an Aboriginal team, from the colony of Victoria. Why were the first Australians to play cricket overseas an indigenous team, and how did this tour come about? Were the players exploited and paraded as a novelty act, or were they respected as serious cricketers? 

• Sport & Optimism
  10/08/2001
  One of the great moments of the Olympic Games opening ceremony last year was when athletes from East Timor marched in the Parade of Athletes. Now, the search is on for a team of volunteer coaches to spend 9 months in East Timor, establishing sports programs for children there. CARL SOLOMON, from Olympic Aid, and JAN WADDY, from the Australian Sports Commission talk about the idea behind the project. 

• The Pregnant Athlete
  03/08/2001
  This week's National Pregnancy & Sport Forum presented strong medical and legal opinions that pregnant women should not be barred from playing sport. But Netball Australia's President, SUE TAYLOR, is defiant that her sport's ban remains in place. 

• What's Wrong With English Cricket?
  27/07/2001
  With the odds on England losing their seventh consecutive Ashes series, what's wrong with English cricket?. MIKE MARQUSEE, author of "Anyone But England - Cricket and the National Malaise", says the decline of the English game mirrors the country's political and social disorientation. 

• Muscular Judaism
  20/07/2001
  With the 16th Maccabiah Games underway in Israel, we'll consider Jewish attitudes and ambivalences to sport. 

• The Samaranch Era
  13/07/2001
  Juan Antonio Samaranch steps down as President of the International Olympic Committee on Monday, the day before he turns 81. So, we offer two very different views on the man who's led the IOC for the past 21 years. 

• Aussie Rules Global Gaze
  06/07/2001
  Introducing the Copenhagen Crocodiles, the Tokyo Goannas, and the Nashville Kangaroos. They're all Australian Football teams in leagues played as far afield as Denmark, Japan, and the United States. And they're not necessarily comprised of Aussie ex-pats. In the Dansk Australsk Fodbold Liga, for example, 75% of players are non-Australian. We'll find out about the growth of these international leagues. 

• Springboks 1971
  29/06/2001
  Thirty years ago, the South African rugby team, the Springboks, arrived in Australia for a six week match tour. 

• No Sex Please, We're Athletes!
  22/06/2001
  For years, the popular belief has been that having sex the night before a big match is bad for your game. Is this just an old coaches' tale, or is there any scientific evidence for it? Canadian physiologist IAN SHRIER reviews what's known.

• Coach Gallagher
  15/06/2001
  Harry Gallagher, the man who coached swimmers like Dawn Fraser, Jon Henricks and Michael Wendon to numerous Olympic medals and world records.

• Dawn Fraser
  08/06/2001
  'The one that came the longest way!
  A gold medallist across three Olympic Games, and named World Female Swimmer of the Century in 1999, Dawn was the youngest of eight children of a working class family. Tough and streetwise, she was an SP bookie's runner at 9 years old, and received her first ban from swimming when she was just 12 years old. Thus began her tempestuous relationship with swimming's officaldom.

• Cricket Caught Behind
  01/06/2001
  With the release of the report on corruption in international cricket released last week, WARWICK FRANKS, the executive editor of Wisden Australia, discusses what is, and what isn't, in this report. 

• The Trouble With Soccer
  25/05/2001
  The Australian-Croatian community responds to this week's tribunal results, dealing with on and off field incidents at a recent Melbourne Knights/Perth Glory finals match. And CHRIS EVANS, Regional Commander with the New South Wales Police, discusses police reponses and strategies to crowd violence, at recent soccer and rugby league matches.

• Sport:The Touchstone of Australian Life
  18/05/2001
  Highlights from the Alfred Deakin lecture, hosted by Amanda Smith at the Melbourne Town Hall this week.

• Cricket & Federation
  11/05/2001
  And how cricket helped to shape an idea of Australia. According to cricket author GIDEON HAIGH, the Australian cricket team that toured England in 1899 both reflected and promoted a mood for national unity, in the lead-up to Federation. And it was through cricket administration that many of our Federation fathers learnt how to run a political organisation! 

• Dealing With Violence
  04/05/2001
  This week, attempts to control violence in sport, by participants and spectators. 

• The Quambatook Tractor Pull
  27/04/2001
  Quambatook is a tiny town in the Mallee wheatbelt of north-west Victoria. It's also the Australian capital of the sport of tractor pulling.

• Orienteering:
  The Thinking Sport
  20/04/2001
  Over Easter, 1,000 orienteers gathered in bushland in central Victoria for the biggest event on their competitive calendar, the Australian 3-Days.

• No Pain, No Gain!
  13/04/2001
  For Good Friday, how the notion of "No Pain, No Gain", that's so embedded in sport, links with a Christian tradition of improvement through pain and suffering. Sports philosopher JEFF FRY talks about the ecstatic dimension to pain and suffering in sport. 

• Traditional Pub Sports
  06/04/2001
  The Sports Factor goes on a pub crawl this week, to look inside the world of traditional pub sports, in England and in Australia. 

• Polo
  30/03/2001
  The biggest international polo tournament ever held in Australia gets underway this week - the 6th Polo World Cup.

• Wollongong v The World
  23/03/2001
  The Wollongong Wolves are preparing to take on the world. As National Soccer League premiers and Oceania Club champions, the Wolves have earned the right to play in the 2nd FIFA World Club Championship, in Spain this July. 

• Confronting Harassment
  16/03/2001
  A study has found that significant numbers of top level Australian athletes have been sexually abused in their sport. TRISHA LEAHY, senior psychologist with the Australian Institute of Sport conducted he study. 

• Re-imagining Cricket
  09/03/2001
  According to cricket enthusiast and writer TONY ROBERTS, cricket has a "Jekyll and Hyde" personality problem that needs to be fixed, so as to restore a unified identity and future for the game. Find out about his radical proposal. 

• The Don
  02/03/2001
  A tribute to the late Sir Donald Bradman, which seeks to place Bradman in his time, and to understand why this cricketer has remained an enduring figure in the hearts and minds of generations of Australians. 

• Weighty Matters in Footy
  23/02/2001
  World soccer authorities are locked in a clash with the European Commission, over whether the same labour laws should apply to footballers as to any other workers. The European Commission says the current system of player transfers contravenes the free trade of labour, and must be reformed. Soccer writer ROY HAY explains why the lengthy negotiations to reform soccer's transfer system remain unresolved. 

• Paralympic Suspensions
  16/02/2001
  And cheating in disabled sport. The International Paralympic Committee has suspended all athletes with an intellectual disability, as a result of the discovery that most of the Spanish basketball team - gold medallists at last year's Paralympics - were imposters. MARIE LITTLE, from the International Federation of Sport for People with Intellectual Disability, says this global suspension is a discriminatory over-reaction. 

• Getting Hot & Sweaty
  09/02/2001
  Playing sport in hot and humid weather can result in dehydration and cramping, as we saw with Patrick Rafter at the Australian Tennis Open recently. It can also be downright dangerous.

• Top End Footy
  02/02/2001
  This week, how farthest north Queensland is being converted from Rugby League to Aussie Rules. 

• Chick Boxing
  26/01/2001
  The Sports Factor Summer Series this week 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? 

• Irish Sport & Nationalism
  19/01/2001
  This week in the Sports Factor Summer Series, the focus is on Irish sports, like hurling and Gaelic football. 

• Ralph Doubell & Franz Stampfl
  12/01/2001
  This week in the Sports Factor Summer Series, the second of a pair of programs on great Australian athletes and their coaches.

• Herb Elliott & Percy Cerutty
  05/01/2001
  This week in the Sports Factor Summer Series, the first of a 2-part series on great Australian athletes and their coaches.

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