By Michael Crutcher
When Brisbane stages the 2032 Olympics, it’s not just the athletes who will feature in stories about the Games.
The entire city will play a role for international media.
What’s Brisbane really like? How’s the weather there? What do they eat there? What about those kangaroos and koalas?
Audiences really don’t care much about the Olympics until the competition starts.
So, they need to be entertained with quirky stories about life in the Olympic city.
I’ve had the good fortune to cover two Olympics – Sydney 2000 and Beijing 2008 – and both times the stories about life in the cities did good business.
In Sydney, locals lapped up the way their city was reported in a positive way by overseas journalists. It was good for the ego.
In Beijing, some of our best-read stories back home were about life outside the Olympic bubble.
The brilliant Garry Linnell found a Beijing restaurant that served up cooked penises from random animals. Garry tested the offerings, gave his penis appraisal, and the story generated plenty of traffic.
I had mates genuinely asking if the wild sheep, donkey and ox penises were available at most restaurants. As I munched on McDonald’s, I told them I didn’t think so.
But that’s what happens in the lead-up to Olympic Games.
Garry Linnell also found a Chinese Olympic spectator school – there were concerns Chinese fans could become stroppy if their representatives didn’t win and behave poorly. That wouldn’t be good for China’s reputation.
And there were the inevitable strolls through Tiananmen Square and the stories about the sapping, sticky Beijing summer days.
It’s a long way off but the best – and the quirkiest – of Brisbane will be in demand for international media.
Get ready for some parts of our city to receive publicity they had never imagined. For better or for worse.