I have never in any country I have spent time in seen such unbalanced coverage of this massive event as I have in Australia.

The Games haven't even started yet, but all the news headlines are about the swimmers' location, the swimmers' love lives, what the swimmers' parents have to say.

Even about (retired) Ian Thorpe's arrival in Beijing. Oh please.

The lack of respect for the rest of the athletes is disgraceful.

When the events actually commence I am sure that as in the past we are going to be very lucky to see anything that doesn't involve people paddling in straight lines up and down a pool.

Raini Singh, Fadden

Roger Dace sees no case for direction of more public money toward high-performance sport (Letters, August 5).

I would ask him to recognise that the current expenditure supports far more than just the travel of athletes and officials to major competitions such as the Olympic Games.

In fact, it yields a range of community benefits. It underpins an industry that employs a significant number of people.

Australian success in international sport is instrumental in attracting high-profile events to our shores, which assists in generating tourism revenue.

It contributes to global recognition of Australia as a high achiever, thereby opening up opportunities in many fields.

Australian sports ''know-how'' has often been commissioned by other nations, producing export dollars.

Truly exceptional sporting performance has aesthetic qualities comparable with the best music, art and ballet, and is a source of delight to many.

In fostering exceptional performance, the Australian Institute of Sport has evolved an operational model that consistently draws attention from organisations outside of sport.

A portion of the funding devoted to high-performance sport is used to enable scientific and medical research, much of which is relevant to the broader community.

The AIS has research partnerships with the CSIRO, National ICT Australia, the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures, and numerous universities.

It is also interacting directly with a number of small- to medium-sized engineering companies and is helping them to build marketable technological capabilities related to sport.

I work in the sports domain, so have a vested interest in this matter, but I think there is abundant evidence that activities associated with high-performance sport have substantive positive effects on community well-being.

Allan Hahn, Chapman

Scam not a game

John Walker (Letters, August 6) made some important points about the responsibility of credit-card companies to report internet fraud.

But in relation to all the people ripped off in the big web-based Olympics tickets scam, what's wrong with the relevant Olympics authority taking some responsibility too?

After purchasing some tickets and investigating them for duplication, the authority could report to the market that the site was bogus.

Media would be interested and it'd encourage use of official sites.

The Olympic movement has a vested interest in avoiding people being expensively stranded in distant countries, disappointed and disillusioned.

Sally Pointer, Jerrabomberra

Water and wastageEvelyn Bean (Letters, August 6) gave three cheers for watering playing fields with stored stormwater.

While preserving valuable sporting ovals is a good idea, the stormwater idea is ridiculous.

That stormwater now gets released to the Murrumbidgee River.

If we retain it, the river has that much less water in it.

Instead of building new storage facilities with separate reticulation, it's much cheaper to keep releasing stormwater and pump more Murrumbidgee water to Googong for ovals.

The river loses the same amount either way. But we save money.

Tom Waring, Ainslie