Photo: © Mikkeli Godfree

Tassie devil: The Sid Taberlay diary 2004

24 year-old Tasmanian Sid Taberlay is a man on a mission. The current Australian and Oceania mountain bike champion, Sid is, like so many athletes this year, striving for a berth at the Athens Olympics Games. But his never-say-die attitude, down-to-earth deameanour and a desert-dry sense of humour - not forgetting a bloody big motor! - puts Sid in the best position possible to realise a life-long dream.

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Athens, Friday, August 13

Feeling pretty special

After breakfast, we headed out on the bike and found the mountain bike course location, it's only 5km away, going straight past and up the the road to the top of the mountain. Fantastic climb, full of switchbacks and a view over Athens. 1.5hrs later, we were at the top doing a U-bolt. Reaching the bottom, we did another 1.5hrs and came back to the village. Security stepped up - we couldn't get back in the usual gate; had the run around with the military boys with machine guns telling us to go to the next gate down, then the next one, and so on. Finally, at the bottom, we went through screenings and interrogations to get back into the village.

5.30pm: time to travel to the opening ceremony. I felt pretty special, leaving the village with a police escort. Their unemployment must be pretty good at the moment, it seemed like there were more police and army people around than residents. After waiting around for hours, the march started. Walking into the stadium was awesome - the crowd was massive, as you all probably saw on TV. It looked fantastic when the Mexican wave went right around the stadium, only it didn't stop, kept going round and round. After the flame was alight, we were getting ready to head out. Within 15 minutes of starting to walk out, we were on the bus and heading back, again with police escort. Departure was so well organised and we were back in no time.