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Around the time that Alicia Coutts made the Australian swimming team for the Beijing Olympic Games, I read a great snippet of information about her.
She confessed that she was so smitten with the sport that she would climb the six-foot fence separating her home from their neighbours, just so she could go for a swim in their pool.
Guess how old she was at the time. A teenager? Nope. A pre-schooler? Nope.
She was only a toddler, by her own candid admission.
When she was six years old, she dreamt of swimming at the Olympics. A year later, her father died of cancer, shortly after assuring her she would fulfil that ambition.
This year, when she earned a spot on the Beijing-bound team, her mother, a single parent with limited resources, said she would be glued to the television set at home, watching her daughter during the Games.
Last week, Channel Seven ran a story about the swimmer’s mother and immediately the station’s phone lines began to run hot.
A pensioner promised to give $100 (Dhs 367). Individuals rang to pledge a huge variety of amounts.
The swimmer’s old school in Birkdale joined in as well.
The next day, the TV channel announced that there had been so many offers of assistance from ordinary folk around the generous land that there was enough to send the swimmer’s mother to Beijing “several times over”.
It ran footage of the delighted single mum phoning her daughter to tell her that she would soon be on a plane to China.
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that the TV channel had one dilemma. There were so many pledges of help that there was much more money than necessary.
So they solved the problem by picking up the tab themselves for the dream trip.
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