}

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

More occasional good news

I like to mix in good news whenever I can, in part to make up for the fact that I’m often critical of one thing or another. I don’t call special attention to that good news, but I decided to start a new tag, “Good News”, for positive posts about positive news.

Today the news is that Olympic gold medal winning Australian diver Matthew Mitcham has secured a major sponsorship deal with Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company. Mitcham’s final dive received the highest single-dive score in Olympic history. He said of his sponsorship, "Hopefully, this will have a snowball effect. If I can get the opportunity where I would be able to train without having to worry about paying the bills, that would be the ultimate goal.”

Mitcham is openly gay (among the few Beijing Olympians who were), but he said that he thought that the economic downturn had more to do with his lack of sponsorship than his sexuality. I hope he’s right. In any case, it’s good to see Telstra back Mitcham.

Telstra operates in New Zealand as TelstraClear.

Found through Joe.My.God.

2 comments:

Nessa said...

that's awesome :)

Arthur Schenck said...

The tired cynic in me might add, "and about time, too", but mainly I'm just pleased that a large Australian coroprate finally did the right thing. Maybe others will now, too.