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The Flame
Brought to you by Edward Ovadia who is in Berlin with official IAAF accreditation covering the championships for Runnerstribe.com
Watch out - the Australian athletics team has a new name and a new uniform. Stepping onto the track in Berlin for the first time ever will be 'The Flame', the new name for the collective Australian team. Introduced today, the idea of the team name is to help unite the athletics population, and the sport loving Australian population, behind a team which now has an identity.
The inspiration for the name 'The Flame' was the "burning ambition" of the Aussie athletes, said Athletics Australia CEO Danny Corcoran. "We now belive the time is right for our sport to have an identity. Something the public can get behind." In the same way that everyone knows who the Socceroos or the Wallabies are, hopefully the same will happen for our track and field team. "We wanted a name that was Australian. That young Australian kids will say: 'I want to be a member of this team'."
In choosing they aimed for something that embodies the passion athletics brings out in people, the fire, the desire. "It's very exciting," said newly minted team captain Steve Hooker. "But what it means is up to us." Hopefully this team will be the ones to start a legacy.
The new uniforms are similar to the old ones in terms of the colour scheme. They went for something "uniquely Australian", which would help the team "stand out". Whether they achieved that is up to you. They're green and white, with the yellow and orange earthy trims which have featured before. And there's a lot of technology in the uniforms from a design point of view, hopefully to help the Aussies compete better.
It's clear that Athletics Australia is trying to create a sense of team spirit and an otherwise individual sport - which is certainly a good thing. It's time that more of the public got behind the sport, and creating a concrete team may be one way to aid that. "You're part of the Flame, now."
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