Oly: Uniforms not Australia's Olympic long suit

AAP General News (Australia)
08-09-2008
Oly: Uniforms not Australia's Olympic long suit

By John Coomber, Senior Sports Writer

BEIJING, Aug 9 AAP - Australia excels at Olympic Games in just about every respect.

Opening ceremony uniforms are not among them.

The team marched into the Bird's Nest wearing a creation that, according to Sportscraft,
was "designed to create the ultimate visual moment".

Ultimate visual moments are clearly in the eye of the beholder.

The uniforms were in the style - if that's the right word - of overworked track suits,
in several shades of blue with silver trimmings over a similarly coloured polo shirt,
topped by a silvery baseball cap.

We were spared the flared skirts with emus on them (Los Angeles 1984), Akubras and
Drizabones (Seoul 1988), and the daggy barbecue shorts and throw-up shirts of Barcelona
(1992).

Gone too were the technicolour combos from Sydney, and those frightful jackets from Athens.

In their place we had "fresh tonal oceanic blues and reflections of ocean light", as
the designers described them.

Ditching the national colours for Australian uniforms is not a bad idea - green and
gold looks lovely on wattle trees but not on people.

It was the style of the clothes themselves that were hard to fathom. They were neither
formal nor truly casual, and from any sort of distance they just looked blah.

Traditionally the Australian uniforms for the opening ceremony are treated as a state secret.

These ones might have been better kept that way.

AAP jc/jmt

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