WE'LL get to the Canadian-born Dale Begg-Smith and his silver medal for Australia in the Vancouver Winter Olympics, in a sec …
In the meantime, for Australian athletes there are two basic models to be the toast of the nation.
1. Be a champion. Cathy Freeman was our best and our brightest, took on the finest athletes the world could throw at her and still won the 400 metres at the Sydney Olympics, despite having the weight of the nation's expectations on her slender shoulders.
2. Be a "little Aussie battler" who comes good against enormous odds. Step forward, or stumble if you must, Stephen Bradbury, who, after a career-long struggle - where he had previously been reduced to doing victory laps for winning the coin toss - finally came good to win gold at the 2002 Winter Olympics in the men's short-track 1000 metres short. (After the four blokes in front of him fell over.)
In both cases, the athletes were clearly so delighted, so thrilled for themselves and their country, that the nation responded in kind and loved them for it ever after. Which leaves Dale Begg-Smith where, exactly?
Exactly. Under normal circumstances, his enormous achievement of winning a silver medal in the men's moguls yesterday, to back up his gold medal in 2006 for the same event, would have been the occasion for great rejoicing. A major medal in the Winter Olympics? You bloody bah-yooty!
Instead, despite the media hoopla, there has been something very close to a national yawn. Personally, I find it hard to feel any sense of connection with him and even a modest attempt at breast-beating sounds hollow.
Not because he has a hyphen in his name. The nation has long loved Wallaby World Cup winning captain Nick Farr-Jones, regardless.
Not because he speaks with such a non-Australian accent. Allan Moffat, Kepler Wessels and Joe Bugner were all loved in their way, despite thick accents. (And let's not forget Phar Lap, who had a particularly thick accent.)
Not necessarily because away from sport he has made millions of dollars by peddling and pushing internet "spyware" that inserts itself into people's computers and reports every key-stroke - though that certainly doesn't help.
No, it is probably because his whole schtick all seems so ruthlessly joyless. He is infamous for offering monosyllabic answers to journalists. And even in victory, or near victory, he offers nothing. To see him on the podium, between a wildly celebrating American and Canadian, while he looked like he had just sucked on a lemon, was to cringe. All of it might be forgivable if there was the slightest sense he has more than a walnut's worth of feeling for his adopted country.
I am, you are, he says he is, Australian. And of course he has had an Australian passport for six years, since earlier falling out with his native Canadian team - though he still lives in Vancouver. But in all those monosyllabic grunts, it has been hard to ignore gaining the feeling that he couldn't give a flying fig for Australia, and is simply flying a flag of convenience. If he doesn't care for us, why should we care for him? I don't. (And yes, I will be very careful with every key-stroke from now on.)
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