My get-pushed challenge this week was from from Peter de Graaff, who asked me to take a photo or photos that characterised the design of the planned city of Canberra - the capital city of Australia that was designed by Walter Burley Griffin, an American landscape architect.
I duly headed down to Commonwealth Place on the banks of lake Burley Griffin after work, but everytime I tried to photograph the War Memorial across the lake, one of the many joggers or cyclists would photobomb the shot! .....so.....I gave up & panned the cyclists instead! The War Memorial is the brown blur at the base of Mt Ainslie.
The city has a very positive attitude to cycling - both recreational and competitive, and many past & present cycling world champions come from Canberra.
@judithg LOL - my daughter was a track sprinter & we have followed Anna's career for many years. I found the media hype of the 'feud' with GB fascinating reading. :)
@ltodd There was a great TV documentary about Victoria Pendleton in the run up to the Olympics and poor Anna was definitely the baddy - I suppose it's what you get when you get two highly competitive and driven women both at their peak - I should think Anna has a thing or two to say about Victoria as well!
@judithg yes I agree the media put a slant on things from both sides. Every time I have spoken with Anna I have been impressed by her maturity, and generosity. All of those who train with her also are very positive. It has been hard for all the Australian female sprinters born in Anna's era too - she has (deservedly) dominated her events since she was 15 years old.
I felt there was enormous pressure placed on Victoria to win.
@ltodd There was a huge back story with her having a secret relationship with one of the performance team - which the coach decided to make public on the day she won her gold in Beijing. That caused a lot of upset with the other team members who felt deceived, her partner lost his job and her big day was ruined. So she worked under a lot of pressure and feeling very unhappy for a long time before they realised that the best thing was to bring her partner back into the fold (I'm paraphrasing a complicated story!). I think we are hard on all of our athletes who achieve great success - they are never allowed to drop back without immense criticism. And of course being great but never winning because you happen to coincide with a world leader is very frustrating indeed!!
November 11th, 2012
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I felt there was enormous pressure placed on Victoria to win.