ABC Radio National
THE SPORTS FACTOR

• Bring Me The Sweat of Gabriella Sabatini
  26/12/2003
  The story of a young Argentine tennis player who, at the age of 15, made the semi-finals in Paris, then went on to win the US Open as well as the hearts of millions around the world [ more ]

• The Man Who Taught Rudolf Valentino How To Kiss
  19/12/2003
  Snowy Baker is the most versatile athlete Australia has produced - proficient in 26 sports. But he was more then that. In a rich life, he found himself at the centre of one of the biggest political fights of the 20th Century, and might also have been the father of the Australian film industry. His story has been worth telling for close to a century and Greg Growden has done that in The Snowy Baker Story, published by Random House. [ more ]

• Of Homer, Sophocles and Pindar
  12/12/2003
  This week a classic edition of The Sports Factor. [ more ]

• Inside the AIS
  05/12/2003
  This week the Australian Institute of Sport said it would be using a $65 million refurbishment to turn itself into the national training centre for Australia's top sports organisations - another part of the evolutionary process from a couple of facilities and a mud-map back in 1981. [ more ]

November 2003
 

• Tell Me Y?
  28/11/2003
  Generation Y, those Australians born after 1982, present a whole range of new challenges for sporting coaches. They are the best educated generation this country has produced. Their lives are a juggling act of work, education, technology and entertainment options. [ more ]

• Wallaby success ... good luck or good science?
  21/11/2003
  Last Saturday night, the Wallabies surprised the world by defeating the All Blacks in the semi-final of the Rugby Union World Cup. For many, it was a case of about time, for others it seemed like good luck. But was it really a case of good science, in this case good sports science? This week we investigate periodisation, the training strategy first used by Roman Gladiators that brought the Wallabies to the boil at exactly the right moment. [ more ]

• A River Runs Through Her
  14/11/2003
  Tammy Van Wisse swam the length of Australia's most important river, the Murray, not just because it was there, but also to highlight its ill-health. Relive that moving, enlightening and ultimately inspiring journey with her as she goes from swimming in pristine waters with a platypus to fearing what might be lurking in the salty, opaque river she found closer to its mouth. [ more ]

• Sensational! The reason people jump out of perfectly good aeroplanes
  07/11/2003
  Freud said they had a death wish, but more recent research says that sky-divers are part of a new sub-set of homo sapiens who've come to the fore in the past 200 years - the sensation seekers. [ more ]

October 2003
 

• On Top Down Under
  31/10/2003
  Today, we borrow a line from eminent Australian sportswriter Ray Robinson to investigate the place of the captain in sport in this country. And we chew the fat with few good'uns, too, Test cricket's most successful captain ever, Stephen Waugh, and triple Olympic hockey gold medallist, Rechelle Hawkes. [ more ]

• When sport and religion are the same thing
  24/10/2003
  Today, we start with the theme from Chariots of Fire and images of fit young Britons in white singlets (not a sponsors' logo in sight) as we look at the way religion is embracing sport. All over Australia now we have a broad range of sporting chaplains. We speak to two of these people, Nett Knox who works with athletes like Jana Pittman to help them come to terms with some of the conflicting demands of the Bible and elite sport, and also Father Brian Morrison, who is the racing chaplain in Perth. [ more ]

• Sumo, Samurai and Scrummagers
  17/10/2003
  As it does everywhere else on the planet, in Japan rugby union reflects the society in which it is played. [ more ]

• The Games Within The Greatest Games Of All
  10/10/2003
  They say nostalgia is the most powerful drug in the universe ... we'll you be testing positive after this week's program. We're looking back at the Sydney Olympics through the eyes of historian Harry Gordon, the bloke who's been to every Olympics since Helsinki in 1952. [ more ]

• The Unhappy Rugby Islands of Oceania
  03/10/2003
  Rugby union is more than a game in the Pacific Islands of Samoa, Tonga and Fiji. But as this year's World Cup in Australia has approached, they have emerged as victims of their own inability to produce quality players and of the globalisation of the sport. [ more ]

September 2003
 

• In search of the "real" home of Australian football!
  26/09/2003
  Just who is playing for the home of the game in the AFL grand final this Saturday? Is it Collingwood on behalf of all Victorians? Or is it Alastair Lynch, the champion Brisbane full-forward who comes originally from Tasmania? Evidence is now emerging that something resembling football - you even got a point for missing - was being played in Tasmania in 1831, four years before John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner set sail for Port Phillip Bay. So is the only state without an AFL team of its own really the place where the great Australian game began? [ more ]

• On top at the bottom
  19/09/2003
  Netball is one of Australia's most successful and popular sports ... at the grass-roots level. Every week all over the country hundreds and thousands of players congregate on those brightly coloured ants nests that masquerade as basketball centres. At one The Sports Factor visited this week, 1200 players turned out for their club and school teams in the space of a few hours - just phenomenal! [ more ]

• A Union of their Own
  12/09/2003
  Rugby league's night of nights, the Dally M Awards, was abandoned this week because of an industrial dispute between the National Rugby League and the Players Association. Rugby league is traditionally a working class game, both in the north of England where it began, and in Australia. But is this a dispute between the bosses and the down-trodden ... or a fight between two wealthy groups over who should get the biggest part of a pretty big pie? [ more ]

• Fish Tales from Tasmania
  05/09/2003

  An afterthought has turned into a $50 million industry in Tasmania. In the 1860s, souls homesick for the Arcadian idyll of Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler made four attempts to get fish roe to Tasmania. As well as the prized salmon, someone added a few brown trout to the freezer box.

  Well the salmon hatched and promptly went to sea, never to be seen or heard from again however, the brown trout are now some of the finest in the world and lovingly pursued by the piscators, the fly-fishers. Roger Butler, a trout fishing guide, and Frank Hussey, a Canadian who changed hemispheres because the trout fishing was better, took The Sports Factor, thankfully in neoprine waders, into the chilly waters of their special Central Highlands lake [ more ]

August 2003
 

• The Natural!
  29/08/2003
  Athletes will grab any advantage they can to be the best or to overcome injury. Sadly some take the chemical route ... but what about nature's way? [ more ]

• The price of sporting fame in the 21st century
  22/08/2003
  Kidnapping, recreational drugs, having your sex life discussed in public ... the mix of sport and celebrity have put the 21st Century athlete into an increasingly strange world [ more ]

• The healing factor
  15/08/2003
  In a week when sports heels have been getting all the tawdry headlines, an uplifting story about sport's healing qualities in some broken communities - the slums of Bennettland in Kingston, Jamaica, in East Timor and soon in the Solomon Island. [ more ]

• May the best chemist win!
  08/08/2003
  This week ... human growth hormone. With the Athens Olympics coming up fast, the IOC has yet to develop an accredited way to test for the HGH. And even when they do, the fight against the doping cheats will be far from over. Gene-doping is the next big battle ground. [ more ]

• Stop being serious, this is funny!
  01/08/2003
  Sport and humour have a long relationship ... helped by the wonderful Yabba, Stephen Harold Gascoigne, he of "send him down a piano and see if he can play that" fame. As sport has changed, so has the way its humour manifests itself. Instead of a bloke calling out from the cheap seats, comedians are making albums sending up the Channel 9 commentary team that out-sell the likes of Kasey Chambers and Powderfinger. [ more ]

July 2003
 

• Can you love sport and think at the same time?
  25/07/2003
  The Sports Factor has gained access to ASIO's file on Phillip Adams. It's pretty thick but one thing that caught our attention was his practice of going around the country and talking to university graduates, telling them to avoid hyper-ventilating at sporting events. There was also this subversive line delivered at Edith Cowan University in Perth: [ more ]

• From the fast lane to civvy street - athletes coping with retirement
  18/07/2003
  There's only been one sports story this week ... and it has everything to do with Catherine Astrid Salome Freeman. [ more ]

• An Aussie Tour de Force
  11/07/2003
  Last Monday was Australia's most successful day ever at the Tour de France ... Baden Cooke winning the stage, Brad McGee wearing the yellow leader's jersey and Robbie McEwen the green jersey for the points leader. Not bad for a nation with just 20,000 registered cyclists. [ more ]

• Free Kicks and Cheap Shots - Just another day in Australian soccer!
  04/07/2003
  The news last weekend that FIFA had reneged on a deal that all but guaranteed Australia a place in soccer's World Cup highlighted yet again the on-going problems with the world game Down Under. [ more ]

June 2003
 

• Languages Other Than Physical Activity
  27/06/2003
  According to the World Health Organisation, our increasingly sedentary lifestyles pose a threat to our health second only to that from tobacco. But are we doing enough, particularly in our primary schools, to promote the benefits of physical activity? [ more ]

• Love on the Outer
  20/06/2003
  Today excerpts from a play that explores love, the universe and ... footy ... which for many people is everything! Just ask Trina. She has just divorced sports fanatic Dave and as part of an acrimonious settlement, has insisted on being given his seasons ticket to the footy. There she meets Al, who has had the seat beside Dave for the past nine years. He's unimpressed by someone whose only knowledge of sport stems from when she went to see The Club, the play by David Williamson. Trina is unimpressed to discover Dave might have shared some of their intimate details with Al. It's a beaut little play called RESERVED SEATING ONLY which is touring Australia with both rugby league and Australian football versions. [ more ]

• Running out of Puff
  13/06/2003
  There are two names writ large in the Australian psyche ... D.G. Bradman and the Anzacs. But when these two first came into contact with each other, they had to share the stage with tobacco. That's because for many years in Australia, as with the rest of the world, there was an easy acceptance of cigarettes in sport. But over the past 40 years, and with Australia setting the lead, there has been a seismic shift in the relationship between sport and the tobacco industry. [ more ]

• It's all downhill from here!
  06/06/2003
  Chris Anthony spends his life finding whopping great mountains in the most out of the way places and skiing down them so he's used to spectacular scenery and amazing adventures. However, his latest experience in the Sierra Nevadas in America left him breathless - literally. He went on a high altitude survival training course with the US Marines and part of the deal was skiing, with a fully laden pack, into a hole carved in frozen lake by a maniacal instructor. Brrrrrrrrrr! [ more ]

May 2003
 

• Bring me the sweat of Gabriela Sabatini! Poetry and Motion
  30/05/2003
  With the French Open underway, we re-visit Clive James' tantalising poem about the young Argentine tennis player who won her way to the quarter-finals at her first attempt ... and also into the heart of the Australian poet. And we look at the way sport and poetry, with and without a capital P, have inter-acted in Australia since the time of the "horsie poets" - Adam Lindsay Gordon and A.B. Paterson. [ more ]

• The Politics of The Sporting Chance
  23/05/2003
  More and more sporting champions are turning to politics ... Nova Peris the latest ... the former Olympic hockey gold medallist and Commonwealth Games sprinter announcing this week she would run ... and quite quickly, too, no doubt, for Federal Parliament. [ more ]

• No Brainers and No Painers
  16/05/2003
  During his 274 game career in the Australian Football League, Garry Hocking had 16 operations, 11 of those on the one joint - his right knee. He needed painkillers, sometimes as many as six, just to get him through the game. As he hobbles through the second year of retirement we ask him: Was it worth it? We also speak with leading sports medicine expert Dr John Orchard about the latest developments in sports medicine. [ more ]

• The Fastest Australian
  09/05/2003
  In Japan last Monday, Patrick Johnson became the first Australian to run the 100 metres in less than 10 seconds. And on Saturday, he will run against the world record-holder Tim Montgomery, again in Japan. These are momentous times for Australian athletics. [ more ]

• The race against racism
  02/05/2003
  Sport has been at the forefront of the fight against racism both in Australia and overseas. For American civil rights activitist Richard Lapchick, that fight has not been without its personal costs. His son was kidnapped and he was attacked by two men who carved nigger into his stomach with his own office scissors. We look at his remarkable story and also look at what still needs to be done to eliminate racism in Australian sport 10 years after Nicky Winmar's famous response to the racist taunts of the AFL crowd. [ more ]

April 2003
 

• The Life and Death of Tibby Cotter
  25/04/2003
  Albert Tibby Cotter was the Brett Lee of his time, the fastest bowler in the world, so fast in fact the English might have tried to have him banned. This was after all ... way before Bodyline. Cotter was also a soldier, joining up for the First World War. In October, 1917, he was killed at Beersheba where, against orders, he took part in the famous cavalry charge by the Australian Lighthorse. Since then, the exact nature of his death has been a mystery. Did he die as the result of a silly mistake - sticking his head above the trenchline - or were his last days and hours far more heroic and romantic then that? With the help of Cotter's cobber Blue and historian Max Bonell, we find out. [ more ]

• Please be up-standing for the Sporting Anthem!
  18/04/2003
  These days you can't have the sporting moment without the song. But what makes a sporting anthem ... and who makes them? Get ready for the explanations behind Down Under, Simply The Best, Up There Cazaly and Waltzing Matilda, as performed by the Sydney Rugby Choir. [ more ]

• "I Don't Like Cricket, I Love It!"
  11/04/2003
  For more than a century the fight for equality has been as much apart of cricket in the Caribbean as the battle to beat an opponent with bat and ball. It was only 40 years ago Sir Frank Worrell became the first black man to captain the West Indies. As the modern Australians and West Indians pull stumps on the first day of the Firest Test in Guyana we look at cricket's role as the instrument for change in the Caribbean through the eyes of Professor Brian Stoddart, the Australian chosen to deliver this year's Sir Frank Worrell Lecture. [ more ]

• The Extra-Ordinary Percy Cerutty
  04/04/2003
  Almost two decades after his death, Percy Cerutty's place in Australian sporting history is still uncertain. Was he the charlatan and opportunist many still claim him to be. Or is he a prophet without honour in his own land - an elite athletics coach (sub four minute!) miles ahead of the rest of the field? We go running up and down the sandhills in search of the answers. [ more ]

March 2003
 

• Surfer Girl
  28/03/2003
  Layne Beachley is the greatest female surfer in history. She has won a record five successive world titles. Yet there was a time when, struck down by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, she contemplated suicide. We talk to her about the highs and lows of a remarkable career ... and life. [ more ]

• Where's My Team?
  14/03/2003
  The National Rugby League has a new theme song ... That's My Team. But with no North Sydney in the competition this year, it could be where's my team. On the day that Season 2003 gets underway, we look at how far the game has come from its humble, working-class origins in the inner suburbs of Sydney and ponder what Karl Marx might make of it all. [ more ]

• Only A Jockey?
  07/03/2003
  We investigate claims the safety of jockeys is being downgraded as the thoroughbred racing industry tries to maintain its slice of the multi-billion dollar gambling revenues in Australia. [ more ]

February 2003
 

• Skateboarding ... seeking respectability.
  28/02/2003
  It's had its ups and downs over the years ... now skateboard is seeking just a little respectability. [ more ]

• The Athlete as Political Activist!
  21/02/2003
  Is Henry Olonga and Andy Flower's protest against Robert Mugabe at the World Cricket Cup the bravest act in sport since the famous black salute by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico? We ask former Olympian and politician, Ric Charlesworth;, sports historian and author Richard Cashman and sportswriter Martin Flanagan. [ more ]

• The Jackson Factor and a Walk Down Memory Lane ...with Tim.
  14/02/2003
  Lauren Jackson is a young Australian basketballer taking the world by Storm. Her coach Tom Maher reckons she is destined to be not just the best basketballer in the world, but the best athlete. [ more ]

• Australian Soccer - The Big Questions
  07/02/2003
  This month, the recommendations of a Federal Government inquiry into Australian Soccer will be made public. Will they be accepted by the Old Guard of Soccer Australia or will yet another attempt at reform fail to find the back of the net? We seek the answers from Remo Nogarotto, the new chairman of Soccer Australia. [ more ]

January 2003
 

• Powerful Women of Australian Sport
  31/01/2003
  We focus on three women who wield considerable power in sport in Australia, one who can stop an AFL game, one who can fill a media conference on demand and another who can shape the public's views on sport. [ more ]

• Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the '60s
  24/01/2003
  In the turbulent and politically charged 1960s, the heavyweight boxer Cassius Marcellus Clay changed his name, politicised his identity, and made his victories symbolic of his beliefs. Reviled and exiled at the time, Muhammad Ali is now regarded as a great humanitarian, and is celebrated in a new feature film.
  MIKE MARQUSEE, author of a book about Ali called "Redemption Song", discusses the ways in which this brash young boxer both reflected, and shaped, the social movements and conflicts of the 1960s, and whether there could emerge in sport today such a figure as Muhammad Ali was in his time. [ more ]

• The Way of the Sword
  17/01/2003
  KENDO is the ancient Japanese martial art of fencing, banned in Japan by the occupying forces after World War 2. It’s less well-known than other martial arts like Judo and Taekwondo, which are Olympic sports. But Kendo has found its way into western popular culture, through the “Star Wars” movies!
  Competitors at last weekend’s Australian Kendo Championships discuss the philosophy of “the way of the sword”, and the influence of this philosophy on western sport. Plus, what might be lost and gained if Kendo were to move closer to western-style sports, in the way that Judo and Taekwondo have. [ more ]

• Rock Climbing in Australia
  10/01/2003
  Do you have a head for heights? Like facing physical danger? Love being active, but not interested in traditional, organised sports? [ more ]

• Good Sport, Bad Sport
  03/01/2003
  Why are some of the most negative memories adults have of childhood to do with sport? How does being good or bad at sport when you’re a child affect you as an adult? [ more ]