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Ao-stralia brushed aside at Opening Ceremony

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And so the dance between broadcaster and Beijing organisers resumes. Already smarting over swimming shifted to morning events at NBC’s behest, Seven has now learnt that Australian athletes have been pushed to the back of the Olympics‘ Opening Ceremony parade.

Australia will rank number 203 of the 205 nations, potentially affecting Seven’s audience for the event. The order of the nations was being dictated by the number of Chinese strokes in the first syllable of each nation in Mandarin. Australia is pronounced Aodaliya in Mandarin and the character Ao has 14 strokes. “You have too many strokes so you are almost last,” a Mandarin speaker said.

The order for the parade, which doesn’t start until 9:50pm AEST, also means that many athletes may pull out of the opening ceremony rather than be forced to stand around for hours in a holding pen in Beijing’s heat, humidity and smog before being allowed to march into the stadium.

An angry Network Seven raised its displeasure to no avail at a meeting of Olympic broadcasters in Beijing last night, says The Australian.

Until the change became known, about one-third of Australia’s Olympic team of 433 athletes planned to march in the opening ceremony. The athletics team, which is training in Hong Kong ahead of its events in the second week of the Olympic program, has been told not to fly to Beijing for the opening.

Australian athletes marching in the opening ceremony will leave the Olympic village about 7pm and will not get back to their rooms until well after midnight.

The opening ceremony is due to finish at 1.30am AEST, for once something that favours WA viewers.

Source: The Australian

2 Responses

  1. I don’t understand what this fuss is all about. If in Chinese Australia is at the end of the pecking order so be it. What was Seven thinking? After sending so many people to China on business “vacation” to sniff the Olympic venues, surely somebody should learn some Mandarin and worn the bosses of the imminent.

  2. It’s not the first time the order of the parade is organised in the local language. In the Winter Olympics in Turin in 2006, teams entered the arena in the order the countries were spelt in Italian.
    In the case of Beijing Olympics, it’s just unfortunate that Australia is third last because of its Chinese translations. Using the same analogy, Britain and the US will be in the middle order because the first syllable of the countries’ respective Chinese name (Ying and Mei) both have nine strokes. However, if the full name is used for each country, Britain will be further in front because the first syllable of the Chinese translation of Great Britain (Da) has three strokes!
    I think the broadcasters will be scrambling for Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary now to get the Chinese translations of the geographic names.

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