Every four years a group of combatants, many of whom have trained their whole lives just for this moment, go toe-to-toe in a winner-take-all contest that bestows glory, if not necessarily honour, on the winner.
It’s not the Olympics. It’s much more ruthless than that. I’m talking about the 2012 US Presidential elections.
If you’re like me, you’ll be interested in what happens in the US. Even in the midst of an economic crisis, they’re still a world superpower and decisions taken there tend to have an impact around the world. It’s nice to know who’s in charge and therefore, what you might expect.
If you’re like me, you’re probably not fond of all the usual talking heads, whose coverage of the elections as is much about their media mogul status as it is about the facts.
I’m not an American, so I don’t need to know the minutiae of who-said-what at which town hall meeting. I just want to know what’s going on, have a laugh as I learn about it and generally speaking, cut through the crap.
SYWBANP is published by a couple of Dutch guys. Though left leaning, there’s no intense skin-in-the-game agenda evident in their coverage. Their mission is to take a look at what’s going on and generally see the lighter side of America’s political olympics. Right now, all the activity is with the Republicans, so that where the coverage is focused (and where the laughs are coming from). The stranger the candidate, the better – and there are certainly some characters in this year’s race.
They not only cover the main players, they also introduce us to a few potential fringe dwellers, too. Perhaps a glimpse into America’s future. Today, for example, I learned about Governor Chris Christie from New Jersey, a potential Republican candidate in 2016 and a man who if his actual work is as accomplished as his oral skills, will make for an even more compelling Republican primary season in four years from now.
SYWBANP is also run by one of my former colleagues from Saab, which is how I found out about it.
Planet America has ABC News Radio’s John Barron playing straight man with The Chaser’s Chad Licciardello doing all the reality-based jokes. It’s on every Friday night and makes for some very informative viewing, often with some insightful special guests from both the US and Australia.
So, for the non-Americans who want to keep an eye on what’s going on there, check ’em out.
There’s nothing worse than an old fat bastard giving you the “I told you so” treatment, but here I go…..
When you live on an island, it’s a good idea to learn how to swim. That’s why all kids in an Australian school are encouraged to take swimming lessons from a very young age. In fact, most kids are old hands at swimming by the time school lessons come around.
There are swimming classes at local pools for toddlers and plenty of parents chuck their kids in at the deep end while they’re still in nappies. People who can afford it get hold of a local pool contractor and build one in their backyard to have their kids be deft swimmers. One such expert swimmer was Ian Thorpe.
Thorpe is/was one of our country’s greatest ever swimmers. His ascension to the top of the swimming heap began when he was just a schoolboy, selected for the Australian swimming team at just 14 years of age. That year, he won 10 gold medals in the Australian underage championships, but more remarkably, set six Australian records in the process.
His international debut in the Pan Pacific Championships (age 15) was marred by an appendix operation but just a year later he took his first two World Championship gold medals. Later that year he won four gold medals at the Commonwealth Games.
His first Olympics were in Sydney, in 2000. He took three gold, including the famous 4×100 relay win where the Australians smashed the Americans like guitars (a response to some US trash talk in the lead up to the event, see below). He also won two silver medals at the Sydney Olympics.
At the 2001 World Championships, he won six more gold. Another six at the 2002 Commonwealth Games and another five gold at the 2002 Pan Pacs.
Thorpe shone again in 2004 at Athens, taking home another four medals, half of them gold.
We shouldn’t forget the world records, either. 13 of them. Thorpe held world records in the 200, 400 and 800 meter freestyle events. They’ve all been broken since, but it was a wonderful achievement.
And all of that had happened before he turned 23 years old.
Every athlete (except maybe some pro basketballers) will tell you that the pinnacle of athletic achievement is the Olympic Games. In 2006, at age 24 and with the Beijing Olympics just two years away, Thorpe decided he’d had enough. He was feeling burned out and just didn’t have the desire to swim anymore. At just 24.
Thorpe has told a packed news conference in Sydney that he is moving on to a “next phase” in his life.
The Sydney and Athens gold medallist has said he decided on Sunday to leave the sport that had “catapulted” him into the limelight 10 years ago.
“I know there is a lot of people out there that want me to keep swimming. I only hoped that I wanted to swim half as much as other people want me to,” he has said.
“It would be dishonest to myself and to others (to continue) as I would be fulfilling other people’s dreams.”
He has decided to pursue other interests after realising competitive swimming was no longer his top priority in life.
“It’s like swimming lap after lap staring at a black line – then all of a sudden you look up” at the world around you, he has said.
“I started looking at myself, not just physically, but also as a person. I haven’t balanced out my life as well as what I should have.”
I remember thinking at the time, like quite a few other people, that this was a flawed decision. I believed 200% that he’d regret not using the full compliment of his talent while he had age and ability on his side.
His movements outside of swimming included some daft forays into television in programs that went absolutely nowhere. Things about travel, and fashion, IIRC. I’m sure there were other business ventures as well, but bottom line, Ian Thorpe is an average person in every respect aside from his ability to propel himself through the water at amazing speed.
The theory that he’d miss swimming was confirmed 18 months or so ago, when the Thorpedo announced that he was making a comeback, with a view to competing in the London Olympics this year, 2012. Everyone wished him well and I think we all wanted to see Thorpe back to his best. I know I did.
It’s a long way to the Olympic podium, however, even if you know the route.
In that semi-final, Thorpe showed that the slow-down earlier in the day might have actually been fatigue rather than race craft. Thorpe came out well but started losing pace from the 100m mark, eventually finishing sixth and not even making it to the final. He ranked 12th out of the 16 swimmers who contested the semi-finals.
His own words told the story:
(It’s) the fairytale that just turned into a nightmare.
Ian Thorpe was the best swimmer in the world at his peak. I’m sure that Michael Phelps would have forced him into the background had Thorpe swum in Athens anyway, but if Thorpe’s legacy was injured by his decision to retire back in 2006, that injury revealed its full depth last night.
Thorpe abandoned a field in which he was the world’s best and at an age where he could have continued to inspire and achieve. I don’t know if he wanted “find himself” or if he was just ignoring the consequences of a big decision as if they didn’t matter (like many Gen-Y’ers before and since). At the end of it all, he “found himself” last night, trying – and failing – to take hold of the Olympic dream that he treated with such flippancy back in 2006.
We’ve all got decisions in our lives that we regret, things we’d like to take back years later, but we can’t. That much was clear from the look on Thorpe’s face and the stunned silence from the crowd last night.
The moral of the story – if you’re good at something, do it for as long as you are able to do it because you’re going to miss it like hell when it’s gone.
And a message to anyone with an extraordinary talent:
Those of us who are mere mortals, the people who cheer you on and can only dream of achieving the things you achieve, doing the things you can do – we don’t welcome you to the land of the mundane. We want you to stay remarkable. And once you become ‘normal’ like the rest of us, you’ll know why.
——
Please don’t think I’m saying that Ian Thorpe is/was a wasted talent. He was extraordinary. I just think he wasted a few prime years in his athletic career, a career that we all enjoyed watching. I wish him good luck in whatever it is he chooses to do now. I just wish we could have cheered him on in Beijing instead of watching Phelps go unchallenged though the whole meet.
If it’s any consolation, I won’t remember Ian Thorpe for last night’s failure. This is my best Thorpe memory – that “guitar” episode from 2000.
The Americans had never lost this relay event since it’s inclusion in the games program in 1964. They knew we were coming, though, and US swimmer Gary Hall Jr thought he’d up the ante by saying they’d “smash us like guitars” in the lead-up to the event. Make sure you watch to around the 3:40 mark or just before, for the Aussie response to that particular taunt.
This is how I’ll remember Ian Thorpe’s stellar career. I just hope we can all learn lessons from the way it ended, both in 2006 and 2012.
It gives you some idea of the wonderful sound of the Alfa V6 engine, though the sound quality on this recording isn’t great, to be honest. I’d also like to replace the exhaust for a throatier aftermarket unit in time. It’s nice, but there’s room for improvement.
The video was recorded with my HD Hero2 camera. The cases on the new Hero cameras don’t have the best sound qualities. I’ll try and do another one with my Rode microphone into another source.
Anyway, limited as it is, hopefully this will give you an idea of the Alfa V6 sound.
The Alfa GTV6 is now registered and road legal here in Tasmania. WooHoo!
Next challenge – to grind away a few centimetres from the top of our driveway to stop it scraping. The cutting wheel has been purchased. Now all we need is some time and some dry weather.
While we wait, here’s a space monkey sent aloft by Aussie band, Skipping Girl Vinegar (good band names appear to be getting harder to find). They’re not the first to gaffa tape a video camera to a weather balloon, but they’ve got some of the best results, I think.
The Alfa and I are back at home so it’s time to give you the run down on the car and the thought process that led me to buy it.
The Car – a brief history.
I thought it was a 1984 model, but it turns out my GTV6 was actually built in April of 1985. I’ve managed to get in touch with the car’s long-term owner, who had it from around 1990 to some time in 2008/9.
Click any of the images to enlarge.
Apparently the car started life as a dealer demo model, then it was leased on behalf a lady owner as her company vehicle. My contact, the long-term owner named Ross H, subsequently purchased it around 1990 with 89,000kms on the clock. To quote Ross, “It was the first one I saw, but after I had looked at about 20 more and it was still the best I’d seen, I went back and bought it – even though I didn’t really want a red one.”
Ross drove it to work for a few years – he was a race engineer at Gibson Motorsport after spending several years with Nissan’s motorsport team here in Australia. Concerned about the mileage he was putting on it, he bought a 4-cylinder Alfetta to wear out and garaged the V6. Ross then prepped and raced the car at Targa Tasmania in the early 1990’s.
Around 2002, the engine in the GTV6 was getting a bit tired, so it was removed and put to one side while a replacement V6 from an Alfa 75 was installed. A few years later, and just prior to a working trip to Asia, the original engine was torn down and rebuilt, a no-compromises restoration that Ross did with a view to driving and keeping the car on his return to Australia. The car had a lot of other work performed under Ross’ ownership as well (see below), all designed to make it the best a ‘stock’ GTV6 could be for an automotive engineer with a motorsport background.
Ross’ trip to Asia turned out to be a more permanent move than expected. I got a lot of this history from him early last week and he’s still there.
Ross sold the car a few years ago to the guy I bought it from last week. Upon learning the history of the car, I was really surprised that the owner didn’t make more of it in his advertising. He complained that he hadn’t had much interest. I think talking more about the vehicle’s very impressive history would have helped a lot. Prior to contacting Ross, I first heard about it from one of his colleagues, Doug G, via a posting on the AROCA website. Learning the vehicle’s history convinced me to look further and finally, to have confidence in buying the car.
Next to 99% of the automotive market, the Ferrari 599 is a svelte work of pure automotive pornography.
Put it next to a Koenigsegg Agera and a Pagani Zonda, however, and it looks like Mama Cass posing next to Twiggy.
I guess the upside for the Fezza is that next to the hypercars in this video, it does come across as being somewhere remotely close to cheap affordable.
Earlier this morning, waiting to get off the boat…..
For the sceptics out there, I’ve done around 1,000kms in this car since picking it up on Friday night. It hasn’t miss a beat. In fact, it’s only got more addictive. And everything works, even the original radio (though it sounds like crap).
And here’s me (and Charli) about 30 minutes after getting home. The boat was rockin and rollin just a little too much to get a decent night’s sleep. 300kms or so later, I was out.
While Swade continues his cross-continental odyssey in pursuit of Italian perfection, here’s a small tale from my end of the paddock by way of interlude music.
Fellow Swadeologist Dr Russell, his partner Beate and I found ourselves luxuriating in the hospitality of our local BMW dealer last Saturday night; cold climate pinot-noir, rare beef fillet on melt in your mouth sourdough, single origin beans and the swinging sounds of an early ‘80s lounge lizard with a tight band behind him. Not an average night on our coastal strip. The local aristocracy were all out in force of course. Breakfast radio stars, fringe politicians, real estate moguls and part-time artists. As the smoke from the barbeque slowly filled the showroom and the crowd spilled around the display cars (!M3 in black & white!) and cream leather furniture we paused to reflect. Here we were to celebrate the arrival of Munich’s latest 3-Series and yet there was a distinct trace of Trollhattan in the air. How so? Bear with me.
As the evening ground on and platters were emptied, snappy BMW launch videos run, gracious speeches from the dealership principal inaudibly delivered until finally the covers were snapped off two curvaceous new sedans. Mr Van Hooydonks finest work. Or at least his latest effort in Bangle-erasure. Winsome shapes housing a mortgage worth of options. Fine vehicles thats for sure. Not my thing, but fine. As we hang around for the last of the beef we glanced outside into the drizzle and notice that not only is there an E30 M3 hiding discreetly there in the shadows, people are also taking the new cars for test-drives. Hmmm, thats brave. Test drives on a rainy night when there’s an endless supply of free booze and when the choice of roads is either freeway or a local set of twisties what would fit as a stunt double for sections of Ze Grune Helle. Apparently there was a breath-testing device somewhere about but as I approached the sales guys it was nowhere to be seen.
Not that it mattered, I’d called a halt at my second pinot and switched to espresso an hour earlier anyway. So, I signed my life away and slunk into the drivers seat of a navy blue, cream interior 328, luxury spec and started adjusting. A lot. There are a lot of options as I noted earlier and so they all demand attention. Sport this, comfort that. Why can’t cars be like my Rotel amplifier with just on/off and volume? Having finally selected some mind-numbing combination of electronic madness I finally pushed start and strained to hear a nice, thrummy buzz over the shrieks from indoors. This is where I started connecting with south-west Sweden and not Bavaria. Unlike its inline-six forbears, the 328 is powered by a 4 cylinder turbo. Rear-wheel drive; that’s true but it still has that unmistakeable Scandian growl. With a gushing salesman on my left and Dr Russell taking perch in the backseat I reversed through a minefield of expensive metal and slowly eased onto the dark, slick road.
It was quickly clear that the new 3-Series cabin is a lovely, refined place to be. I’m not hot on the textured wood interior (memories of primary school lino cuts) but the overall effect is comfortable, classy and very, very polished. Too polished. I wanted to hear what I was driving so dropped the window to let in the cool, wet night air and at least a hint of the exhaust note. We rumbled off down through the traffic lights and industrial suburbs, past the freeway on-ramp and through to the winding bends and switch backs of one of my favourite roads. Its tough to know how hard to push a car in this circumstance. You want to feel it move – but not wrap it around a tree. Somehow I found a middle ground and with rain splattering in my ears, wound out that turbo-4 as best I could. It’s a beautiful motor which makes a beautiful sound and is beautiful to drive. Strange then, that it made me sad.
All I could think about on the way back to the dealer and then later when I drove home in my well-worn and loved 93 SportCombi was: there but for the grace of God/Allah/Earth Mother/Grand Scientist goes Saab. Twenty years ahead of its time perhaps. The irony of BMW expanding its line-up with one turbo-charged wonder after another while Saab lingers in a set of dusty folders on a liquidation lawyer’s desk is tough to bear. Perhaps it’s a kind of backhanded compliment which just proves what we Saab alskàre knew all along. The unanswerable question for now is: will we ever see it again?
I had a 4:30 start this morning to get a 6am flight. I’m reasonably knackered. We also ran out of light this evening.
Because of those two factors, I’ll have to save both the detailed description/explanation and the pretty pictures for later. All we have right now are some driveway shots. Sorry
Those who voted Alfa – nice guesswork.
Those who voted Viggen – one day, just not now. If there are any Aussies reading this who might be interested in a Viggen, check out the one on Carsales at the moment. The car looks fantastic and the seller, from my conversations with him, seems like a very genuine guy.
And yes, the GTV6 is absolutely fantastic. Everything works, and works beautifully.
