You’d think athletes are mostly a laconic bunch, not given to spouting off in any consistent way in public. This past week seems a little different in that regard, from two different sporting fronts.

As we rev up toward the Winter Olympics in a few weeks, U.S. ski champion Bode Miller has been offering up training tips on TV’s “60 Minutes” and he’s been causing a rucus. It seems Mr. Miller reported that he had, on occasion, raced while hung over from a night of drinking.

As the protests mounted and people called on Miller to apologize, I kept hoping someone would ask him what the slalom gates looked like as he came down the course. Were there twice the number in his fractured vision? I know on the rare occasions when I would work out stoned in the pool the lane lines on the bottom seemed to move up and down and around as I chugged from side to side. Surely ski gates must do the same, I pondered. They could have asked him if it feels any easier landing on your tush when you’re drunk as opposed to sober. But no one did. We were supposed to feel outraged and offended. I suppose I should feel a twinge of regret that Bode Miller is into more than just the Breakfast of Champions but I don’t. Sorry. Athletes are only slightly larger than life in my book, and I don’t expect them to be as pure as the driven snow. As long as they compete honestly and don’t run over anyone on their way to the finish line.

A more annoying boo-boo perhaps was what occurred in the world of tennis from the Heineken tournament in Auckland this past week. Teen sensation Andy Murray of Scotland put his foot in his mouth after completing his match against Denmark’s Kenneth Carlsen when he said “we were both playing like women.” The crowd took great exception and pounced immediately upon the poor lad with a chorus of boos.

Andy should have remembered where he was. In a country where the Prime Minister is a woman and the populace gave women the right to vote way back in the 1890s. Gulp. And he should remember where he will be, starting Monday, for the next two weeks. He’ll really have to watch his mouthings in Australia, the Land of Manly Women and Manly Men. Sometimes I think there is very little difference between the two when it comes to sport. Someone advised me once that if I wanted to make inroads among Australian men I had better play “one of the boys.” It’s been exaggerated over the years, but it’s still true. The degree to which an Aussie man likes a girl can be measured by the degree to which she can be a good “mate.” Do they even use the term “wife” Down Under? I wonder. To be one of the boys, you have to knock back some serious slabs of tinnies in addition to hitting an inside-out forehand without your titties getting in the way. A tall order, but the women get the job done.

Even during the recent racially-tinged riots occurring around Sydney the women were caught on camera dukking it out with other women. “Good punch, honey,” I was thinking, before I caught myself in something resembling shame. It was a veritable free-for-all, and the women know they have a place at the table in that now too. Whether they should want to sit at that particular table is another matter.

So Andy Murray got wised up in a hurry. Reportedly he seemed rather stunned by the crowd’s reaction. And he is, in his defense, barely out of his teens. And he does come from a land where tennis still goes on in white costume only, thank you. And a country that is probably going to be the last Grand Slam tennis country to award equal prize money to the women.

This is Andy Murray’s first trip Down Under; he’s only been there a few weeks now. But after the Australian Open concludes, hopefully he can return to his native soil refreshed and carrying some new and democratic ideas to Old Europe.

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