Aussie Dopers : The Men's swimming 1500 equals the Superbowl?

The Game Room
1

In the States we saw Grant Hackett going for a third consecutive title in the 1500 freestyle & saw him lose his gold crown to Ous Mellouli.

Before the race our TV announcers said “This race is the Australian Superbowl”, “All of Australia has stopped to watch this race” and “It is impossible to overstate the importance of this race to Australia.”

Yet when I looked for reaction to this seminal event in Australian history on Australian websites I am surprised that there seems to almost no coverage. Oh an article or two about it sure … but nothing like you would expect if it was really the most widley anticpated sporting event of the year like our Announcers led us to believe.

Clearly there is hype going on - as there always is in sports. But this seems pretty egregious (full disclosure - this sounded fishy and over the top to me when I was hearing it but I bought in & now am a bit PO’ed)

So How badly was this oversold to U.S. Audiences regarding its importance to Australia?

Would you say that it was a top 5 sporting event for Australia this year? How about top 3 for these Olympics? Did anyone actually care ?

2

Australians are on the whole far more interested in aussie rules football, cricket, rugby league, and rugby union. In the context of the olympics though, swimming seems pretty popular, and obviously swimming events where an Australian has a good chance of winning is more popular and a swimming event where an Australian has been winning for several years is more popular again. It may be in the top three for the olympics depending on who you talk to.

If he had won it would have been listed in the top 5 australian sporting moments for the year, if some TV station were to make such a list, which they generally do.

3

Not so much Superbowl as hyperbole*. It’s important but nowhere near as pervasively so as the SB in the USA is.

  • pron: hyper-bowl