As it continues to rain gold medals on
Australian athletes, and the Commonwealth Games maintain their stranglehold on
the local media, Crikey thought it was time to deliver a startling fact about
the Games: Australia is not the only country competing at the event.

You could be forgiven for thinking it was.
If you look closely, you can actually see athletes from other nations running
alongside the Australians (it’s not a trick of the light), or on one of those
rare occasions Australia doesn’t win gold, silver and bronze, the camera
reluctantly lingering on someone from Kenya or Mozambique receiving their medal
before normal service resumes.

It might be seditious – or at least
unpatriotic – of me to make this information public, but hell, I’m going to do it anyway: athletes from
other nations have been performing noteworthy feats of athleticism in Melbourne too.
There, I’ve said it.

Unless you’ve been watching Indian TV via
satellite, you’re unlikely to know of Samresh Jung. Well, he’s an Indian
shooter and he’s won five gold medals, the most of any competitor in any sport at the Games so far. Still in the running for
two more golds, he could surpass Ian Thorpe and Susie O’Neill’s record of six
gold medals at a Commonwealth Games.

Though he rated a small mention in this
morning’s Australian, don’t bother asking Ken “I’ve never met a cliché I didn’t
like” Sutcliffe for details.

Uganda, currently equal fourteenth on the medal tally, won its only
medal
last night, with Dorcus Inzikuru taking out gold in the 3000 metre
women’s steeple chase. Of course,
it was shadowed by the emergence of Australian John Steffensen in the
400
metres, but Inzkiru put herself in the running for the quote of the
Games. “I didn’t run so fast, I didn’t want to leave them behind,” she
said
after her victory.

No chest-beating nationalism there,
something local TV broadcaster could take note of.