Battered Sav, Hello Boys, Close the Door, Wigwams, Corkscrew, Leapty Leap, Party Date, Crazy Date, Goose, Flat Bags, Offering the Tool Box to the Judge...
You might be wondering what is this all about?
Well these are the popular Aussie terms for various standard moves that the male gymnasts do in their floor routines. I kid you not!
We have Australian satirists Roy and HG to thank for having given Aussies this rich gymnastics lexicon and all from their own alternative gymnastic commentaries during the Sydney 2000 Olympics. See and hear for yourself in this clip...
So who are Roy and HG?
They are Australian satirists whose shtick is lampooning the jingoistic style, self-important outlook, social conservatism and latent homoeroticism of Australian sports commentators for blokey sports such as AFL and rugby use. They then apply this style of commentary on all sorts of other sports, events and, at-times absurd, situations. They've covered Australian elections, had their own talk shows on TV and radio and, of course, provided alternative commentaries for actual sports events such as the NRL Rugby Final. They've regularly stated that their mission is to bring about an improvement to the general standard of sports commentary. Part of this mission has involved them overplaying tired cliches employed by sports commentators, such as "throwing down the gauntlet".
Their crowning moment was when they hosted the nightly 2000 Olympics round-up show The Dream (where the clip is from), which became the hottest ticket in Sydney during the Games. Roy and HG also gave their own form of commentary for other sports such as diving, wrestling and weightlifting. It was their gymnastics commentary though that created such a buzz that everyone in Australia was talking about more that than the actual games. Since then, the sexual innuendo-tinged gymnastics terms "battered sav", "hello boys", "crazy date", "party date", "flat bags" and "goose" are what many Australians use to describe these (and related) moves, that it can be a shock to Aussies when they hear that these are not the official terms used by actual gymnastics commentators.
Roy and HG do like pushing the envelope. During the 2000 Olympics they found themselves in major trouble... for introducing an alternative Olympics mascot, "the battler's prince", Fatso the fat-arsed wombat, as a thinly veiled protest against the commercialisation of the Olympics. Fatso's popularity so rapidly and massively eclipsed that of the official mascots, Olly, Millie and Syd (who Roy and HG renamed as "Dickhead"), particularly after Australian athletes were seen carrying Fatso when receiving their gold medals on the dias, that athletes were later banned from appearing with the loveable stuffed wombat. The ensuing public relations disaster forced the Australian Olympics Committee President, John Coates, and the Director General of the International Olympics Committee, François Carrard, to distance their organisations from this Fatso-cancelling directive. After the games, Fatso was auctioned for charity, and there was even a statue of him at Sydney's Olympic Park in commemoration of the Olympic volunteers... and he has his own Wikipedia entry. Fatso is an Australian legend!
Each episode of The Dream ended with a clip of a rejected Olympic Games song, some of which were even performed by the songwriters themselves. Listening to the cliché-ridden and often corny lyrics, everyone could see why they ended in the rubbish bin. However, one song outshone the rest of them... Go You Good Thing. The song is often dragged out of the vault during Olympics time, and don't be surprised if some of the Aussie athletes even sing it while barracking for their team mates. A Olympics song for the people, even John Farnham sang the song to end The Dream's magical run.
The Dream has gone down in Australian history as an unforgettable moment in Australian TV – remarkable for a show that ran for only a fortnight to have such a long-term impact on the Australian psyche. It truly "threw down the gauntlet".
For more about the Dream, check out this article.
And if you need to avoid having a 'battered sav' and make sure your 'hello boys' is one that will win over the Aussie public, then let's talk.
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