Has Bermuda Triangle Jinx Reached Sydney?

Superstitious? You should be. An Olympic team have gone mysteriously missing!

The Bermuda team, with only six members, is one of the smallest competing in Sydney.

Sailors Peter Bromby, Lee White and Sara Wright make up half of the country’s 2000 Olympic team. They’ve polished their talents in what fiction has portrayed as the scariest, most treacherous waters in the world – the Bermuda Triangle.

Peter and Lee are competing in the Star class of the sailing event. Together they have competed in three world championships and the 1996 Olympic Games. Finishing 13th in Atlanta, superstition once again darkened their starboard. Sara is competing in the Women’s Europe event.

Sailing competitors are perhaps the luckiest of all the athletes in the Village. Their venue is none other than Sydney Harbour. Sadly, good fortune has not been on the side of the Bermuda team.

Equestrian competitor Mary Jane Tumbridge has been particularly unlucky. During the cross-country phase of the three-day individual event, her horse, Bermuda’s Gold, fractured a leg. It was later decided the fracture was inoperable and the 14-year-old mare had to be put down.

In 1999, Mary Jane and Bermuda’s Gold won the individual event at the Pan American Games and Mary Jane was named Bermuda Female Athlete of the Year. This tragedy has understandably dampened the spirits of the fate-dogged team.

Swimmer Stephen Fahy, a competitor in the 100m butterfly and the 200m individual medley, follows an established ritual each time he competes – an extra precaution to make sure nothing goes wrong. Before every race he jumps up and down twice behind the starters blocks and then rubs them with his hands.

Spookily, when compiling this story it appeared Bermuda’s competitors had all vanished. Perhaps they too, have been swallowed by the phenomenon that is the Bermuda Triangle…

Corrina Frankham Village newspaper

Source: SOCOG