Editorial: Olympians green and gold and maroon all over

To put it bluntly, Queensland is bloody good at sport – and Olympic sport in particular, writes the editor.

For many people around the world, and even in Australia, it came as a surprise when Brisbane secured the honour of hosting the 2032 Olympic Games.

While Brisbane may not carry the same international cache of Sydney or Melbourne (yet), there is one very simple reason that Queensland’s capital is the perfect place to host the world’s greatest sporting festival.

To put it bluntly, we are bloody good at sport. And Olympic sport in particular.

As of yesterday, Queensland had accounted for eight of Australia’s 12 gold medals. To put it another way, Queensland (population 5.2 million) is equal to Japan (population 125 million) and just ahead of Italy (population 59 million).

We have half the number of golds compared to medal tally leader China (population 1.4 billion).

And don’t think for a second that this is just a statistical quirk.

The same thing happens in virtually every Olympics, with Australia’s medal tally built around our swimming squad, of which the most successful members are invariably Queenslanders.

At these games we have individual gold medals won by Kaylee McKeown (two) as well as Ariarne Titmus, Mollie O’Callaghan, Cam McEvoy and two women’s relay teams largely made up of Queenslanders.

We’ve also seen born-and-bred Gold Coaster Saka Sakakibara claim an emotional win in BMX racing.

With a week to go, expect some lesser-known Queenslanders to pop up on the medal tally – the product of natural talent, sunshine, a healthy lifestyle and an obsession with sport.

But our natural advantages can only take us so far. It takes people in the right places to administer the programs and create the opportunities so our most talented athletes can get the best out of themselves.

Someone like Chelsea Warr, who became known as the “Gold Medal Maker” in Britain, when, as their performance director, she guided a famously underperforming team to the incredible heights of 29 gold medals at their home Olympics in London in 2012.

Queenslander Warr returned to her home state of Queensland in 2020 to head up our Academy of Sport, but was driven out by political interference.

Premier Steven Miles has subsequently agreed that the QAS should be independent from government. Perhaps the excitement of Queensland’s incredible Paris performance could convince him to pick up the phone and invite Ms Warr back to the QAS, if not as director then in an advisory capacity.

While a Brisbane Olympics would take Queensland to a new level on the international stage, it could also propel our already amazing athletes into the stratosphere.

Like Paris, and London in 2012, we could see a hometown games for the ages, with Queenslanders dominating for the green and gold.

FAIR GO FOR CHEAP FARES

Queensland will today embark on a social experiment that – if it goes well – many people may not even notice until they check their bank statements.

The six-month trial of 50c fares for TransLink travel starts today.

Will it encourage people to abandon their cars for the work commute? Will it attract more families into the cities on the weekend? Will the peak-hour congestion on South East Queensland roads ease? Will the public transport system cope with the increased demand?

The answer, frankly, is no one knows, but the data that is collected throughout the trial may prove invaluable for future city planning.

However, passengers have been advised to only use their go cards on TransLink buses as the smart ticketing system – where passengers can tap on and off with a credit or debit card, or a phone banking app – is not yet working on buses.

It’s an embarrassing failure of an otherwise well received program.

The smart ticket program will now not be delivered until mid-2025 – from an earlier target of 2022 – and will cost nearly $400 million, up $22.8 million on original estimates.

Despite the ticket issues TransLink has declared that it is “operationally ready” for the increased demand that 50c fares will bring, with extra buses on standby if they need to be deployed on crowded routes.

Public transport usage, predominantly in the southeast, remains significantly below pre-Covid levels – by about 450,000 trips a week.

If this experiment can, at the very least, convince those people to either come back into the office or leave the car at home once more, it will have been a success.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here

Originally published as Editorial: Olympians green and gold and maroon all over