Two things from Timed Finals and the BBC news website connected in my head this week. The first was about Sharon Davies - former Big Breakfast presenter in the UK. She 'won' a silver medal at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow behind Petra Sneider from the DDR who has since admitted doping so Sharon, legitimately, should have been the gold medalist. She then took a 9-year break and decided to get back into the swing of things. At the 1989 European Championships she swam faster than she did in 1980! That's a pretty impressive result, even though Dara Torres looks like re-writing the possibility equations.
Sharon was a very high-maintenance (aka, difficult to deal with) swimmer. When we were going through the Trials for the Europeans we would have a staff meeting each evening to review the qualifiers from that day. The first thing on the agenda each evening was, 'Has 'she' qualified?' and 'Who is going to deal with her?' The night she qualified there was an aura of fear around the table. 'Give her to me,' I said, 'She's fine.' And she was; the most skilled and professional swimmer I had ever encountered; I count her as a friend and I know she's been though some pretty harrowing times. I think she does her 'image' no good at all with the pin-up photos but I guess she knows what she's doing as she's survived in the pretty hard world of media exposure.
So, the two things; first an item saying Sharon had signed up as a turkey! I think Bernard Matthews' company and product have come under some criticism from Gordon Ramsey on 'The F-Word' and Sharon has to make them look all fluffy, cosy and tasty again. Bootiful.
... and then another item saying a turkey had used bad language in Parliament. Well, that's what I thought it said and I connected the two stories and thought Sharon had transmogrified, donned her team mascot uniform and toddled off to Westminister to let rip with her opinion in words which offended the Right Honorable members.
Hilary eat your heart out.
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