Capturing the moment
We tell all the stories at the Games, from heroes to battlers
AFEW days before her Olympic final, Cathy Freeman got to talking with her coach, Peter Fortune, about what she might wear in the big race. It was an unusual conversation. What Fortune didn’t know was that Freeman was planning something. She was thinking she might wear the one-piece suit and, after a brief conversation, Fortune thought it was a masterstroke.
For us here, right now, the sight of Cathy Freeman crossing the line in her onepiece suit is the iconic image of not only the Sydney Olympics but, really, of Australia at the Olympics.
It is our go-to memory. But the suit wasn’t the BIG story.
The sigh was the big story. Moments after crossing the finish line, Freeman sat down on the track, suddenly a vulnerable young woman again, and with all the world watching she let out a sigh that echoed back to her ancestors.
The story was as much about the sigh as the gold medal.
For Freeman, that sigh was the end of her struggle, the final moment in what began as a young girl and then stepped up for real six years earlier, in 1994, when she innocently grabbed an Aboriginal flag after winning Commonwealth Games gold and became the focal point of her people’s fight for recognition.
By Sydney the pressure was immense, almost incalculable. Because, by Sydney, all the world was focused on her journey.
It was a journey for Freeman.
We at News have been on our own journey.
Finding the story, and telling the story, is what News does better than anybody.
Whether it be Freeman and Ian Thorpe in Sydney 2000 or Herb Elliott in 1960 or a young Snowy Baker swimming in the 4x200m relay, then heading to the diving pool before finally winning silver as a middleweight boxer, all at the 1908 Games in London, News has been there.
We have been part of the Olympics movement from the beginning.
For all the big moments. Whether it’s poolside or trackside. Ringside or sideline.
Sport is in News’s blood. And, as such, receives the recognition it deserves.
That means we cover not only the heroes but the battlers, the ones whose appearance at the Games in any other sphere would normally show up only in the details at the back of the sports section. But at News we reveal that their greatest glory was, in fact, getting there.
So yes, we tell their story, too. They are the ones who Have A Go. News loves those who have a go. After all, it is the company’s own story.
It is this attitude that has underwritten News’s coverage of the Games from the very beginning, and it’s everywhere.
We don’t just cover the Olympics, we take an active role in its operation.
When Sydney put together its bid for the Sydney Games, News took up the pitch with them, working on the AOC’s behalf and making sure we pulled it off.
We did it for the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast and nothing will change for Queensland’s bid for 2032.
These Olympics will be perhaps the most era-defining of all as they come out of a year when the world stopped, and the Games will reignite global optimism.
And we are proud to be the official, and the exclusive, print partner for the Australian Olympic Committee.
News will mobilise across its entire network — its national, metro, regional, rural and community digital and print platforms.
Taking the story to Australians, better than anybody. Better access to athletes, from the gold medallists to the battlers whose stories demand to be told, they are all covered.
We will offer readers the most comprehensive and most personal coverage of the athletes in Tokyo from the moment they win selection. We are also proud of our long association with the Olympic movement, and it is with pride we will send a world-class team to Tokyo to bring the best insights, interviews and news from on and beyond the track, pool and court.
tentatively titled Bloodmoon and set 10,000 years before the events of Game Of Thrones, was to have starred Aussie actor Naomi Watts. A pilot was shot in 2019 but ultimately it didn’t proceed, leaving a still-sworn-to-secrecy Watts as devastated as the rest of us. “I’m sorry,” she told SMARTdaily earlier this year. “I feel your pain. I equally got into it. I wasn’t a huge fan and hadn’t seen the shows until I was hired and then completely binged everything within the space of a
couple of months and it’s just wonderful. It’s a deep shame, it would have been great fun. But I am not allowed to give anything away I’m afraid.”
Things are looking more hopeful for a second effort House Of the Dragon, which is due for release next year. One of its stars, UK actor Olivia Cooke, who will play Alicent Hightower, confirmed to SMARTdaily shooting is slated to begin imminently (COVID-permitting). Like Watts, she was a late adopter, but a fervent convert to the fantasy world having binged her way through the original series while in London lockdown. “I remember at a lot of points texting the director saying ‘you have put me into a catatonic state’,” she says. “I mean the Red Wedding? Hideous. Why
would you do that to anyone? I am very sensitive at the best of times but you are with those characters through thick and thin and it was just too much for me at points. There were episodes where I was just crying all the way through.”
NEVERENDING STORY
Earlier this year it was also revealed HBO was working on another series based on Martin’s novella series Tales of Dunk and Egg. Three more possible spin-offs were floated last month exploring different times and places in Martin’s fantastical world: 10,000 Ships, 9 Voyages, and an unnamed series set in the King’s Landing slum of Flea Bottom.
There’s also a play in the works for Broadway, the West End and Australia in 2023 that would mark the return of dearly departed fan favourites including Ned Stark and Jaime Lannister to bring to life a tournament set just 16 years before Game Of Thrones.
And then there’s Martin himself. Although his books have now sold more than 90 million copies and been translated into 45 different languages, it’s been 10 years since the most recent, A Dance With Dragons, was released. And with two more volumes to come – The Winds Of Winter and A Dream of Spring – fans are despairing that he will ever finish the Song Of Ice and Fire Saga.
In 2019, Martin wrote on his website before a proposed trip to New Zealand that if he did not finish the book by July 29, 2020, fans had permission to imprison him “in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid” but having blown out that deadline and also signing a five-year deal with HBO for more projects, alarm bells are ringing again.
But, as he’s been saying for a decade and no doubt will say again, the book “will be done when it’s done”.
Game Of Thrones: The Iron Anniversary from