If it cannot be denied it will be fixed in the most politically expedient manner

If it cannot be denied, it will be fixed in the most politically expedient manner. Instead, they could play at other, unnamed Olympic events and on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Talkback radio was full of recriminations; the newspaper letters pages were brimming.Without consulting the parties most certain to be affected by the change in plans – the 1,200 American schoolchildren – Knight announced that the organising committee board had uninvited them from participating in the opening ceremony. Besides, he said of his countrymen: “They’re not good enough.”Sued is a word that gets everyone’s attention.

That is the status of the president of the organising committee, who is also the NSW Government Olympics Minister, Michael Knight. A small part of the rest of the world saw how things work in Sydney in certain circumstances. Birch claimed only the Americans had the 221/2in step – so important for all those tightly choreographed and intricate formations – down by rote. It is an evocative, all- purpose word with the added benefit of sitting nicely in a newspaper headline Justified doesn’t work as well. But it didn’t and it did, so it was not until mid-June that it became known that Australia’s high school marching band members (not a massive constituency, it’s true, but suddenly a very popular one) had been snubbed.Snubbed. “International” was the safest, if not most linguistically accurate word Birch could have used to describe the cast he had in mind for this routine.
For if Birch, the Australian who choreographed the hellos and goodbyes at the 1984 and 1992 Olympics had been completely frank in his presentation, it would have read like this: “International (sic) marching band: 1,200 Americans, 300 Japanese, 500 Australians.”And had it read like that, it would probably never have got past the organising board headed by a minister of the government of New South Wales, a man with a bloodhound’s sense of the merest shift of prevailing political zephyrs. “International marching band: 2,000 members,” was agreed upon without even considering the fine print.

“EVERY OLYMPICS”, a long-time observer of the quadrennial sports and cultural free-for-all noted earlier this year, “has an absolutely inconsequential decision that unites a nation.”

So it was for the board of the Sydney Olympic Games Organising Committee when they considered and approved the latest item on Ric Birch’s program for the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Olympics. Like Colin Jackson, he can now start packing his bags to take on the world once again.. While Carl Lewis was marking his debut in international championship competition with three gold medals, and Daley Thompson and Steve Cram were striking gold for Britain, Weir was a qualifying-round competitor in the hammer. The Brummie defeated athletes half his age with a winning throw of 61.35m in the discus.