Those unfamiliar with The Gurgler’s Crap Fantales should know it doesn’t necessarily mean we think the subject is crap, it is just that in comparison the uber-famous celebrities that adorn the biographical treat currently, a normal person who follows trends like the Kardashians, Reality Cooking Shows and potentially drives a Jeep would think they are rather crap. Here is where to find the archive of Crap Fantales.
Not here at The Gurgler. We celebrate the forgotten and forgettable. Giving those who have long disappeared from the memory of the ordinary person on the street a chance to rush back into the consciousness of the three and a half people that read this website.
And so with the Olympics looming, we are proud to introduce our series of Olympic Crap Fantales.
This week we start with former track cyclist Martin Vinnicombe, who was the face of sports drink company Lucozade in the 1980’s with the famous catchphrase (famous for us anyway) “Martin Vinnicombe – Mmmmmedal Winner”. Sadly Youtube couldn’t provide us with a copy of the ad. just a bunch of ads to skip.
Like any Crap Fantale at The Gurgler there is still a measurement of achievement in the subject’s life/career, and Martin was only one step off a gold medal., a feat a lot of Olympians would be quite happy to settle for. That piece of silver came in the 1988 Olympics at Seoul in everyone’s favourite cycling event – the 1000m time trial in an eye catching performance that dragged him close to the top of Australian sporting celebrity.
But we can hear you say, “he’s a cyclist, surely he was on the gear” and you would be correct.
In a good lesson for any budding sports person out there, a quote from Wikipedia outlines the ethos behind the man at the time and probably cycling in general as his former manager pointed out “He knew the only way to win was to cheat”. A terrible state of affairs for sport at that time if this was the thinking. But it’s all changed now for the better hasn’t it. Cycling is the Domestos of world sport now.
Leaving that aside, his silver medal still stands, as do we in his honour as the first entrant into our Olympics Crap Fantales Hall of Fame. And given it is cycling, wouldn’t everyone had been on the juice anyway, so it is almost a completely fair silver medal.
Sadly, there’s not much else around to find out aside from his silver medal and drug use, but we’re sure he is still winning medals elsewhere.
Next week we unveil our second inductee into the Crap Fantale Olympic Hall of Fame.
