I went to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne last weekend which is about 80 kilometres (50 miles) east along the auto route.

It is an amazing museum with lots of sporting equipment signed by famous Olympic athletes going all the way back to the founder of the modern Olympics himself – Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

They had lots of audio-visual displays and you can choose any number of opening and losing ceremonies going back to the 1920’s by tapping on the touch screens. I was there with my friend and we first selected the 1936 Berlin opening. It was weird – it was like going back in the ‘Time Tunnel’ seeing the Fuhrer and all the cronies strutting around in full uniform. Stranger still was seeing all the athletes from all the countries dipping the flags and returning the ‘Heil’ salute…

There were a couple of older generation Europeans standing behind our open booth watching and when they saw Adolf you could tell it was a very personal moment - I could hear them suck in their breathe when they saw him and almost ‘feel’ their unease seeing him again.

We moved on to the next video which was ski-jumping from the 1952 Oslo winter Olympics and saw people in wool jumpers, leather boots and bindings, all mounted on big wooden skis, jumping hills. Today of course it is all space age clothing and ultra-light equipment - how times have changed. Still, just looking at them, you can see these folks were a different generation –possibly a better generation? Men like these trekked to the north or south poles with nothing but Sealskins and mitts, no GPS’s, laptops or satellite phones – just a sextant, their navigational skills and their brains. Men like these dragged wooden sleds up and down snow drifts for days and weeks and all with typical Victorian stoicism and dry humour. If ever you want a tale of courage, leadership and courage in the face of adversity, read or even better get the DVD, of (Ernest) Shackleton’s Polar team and their struggles. The BBC did a docu-drama with Kenneth Brannagh as Shackleton and it was awesome.

Anyhow, I digress. Here are some pics of the museum and the gorgeous gardens and stunning view of the lake. Not that we got to see much of it of course – it was bucketing down that day so all we saw was sheets of rain!

There were also the Olympic torches from many of the games and memorabilia and news reports going back to Munich and the kidnappings, the boycotted Moscow and L.A games etc. Remember all that?...

What was also cool was all the stars of each Olympics - Nadia Comaneci in the gymnastics getting a perfect 10. Mark Spitz on the U.S. team getting a record seven gold medals. That man was one amazing swimming machine (but oh that 1970’s hairstyle)!

As a side note I used to work for Conoco-Phillips in Perth and we had a visit from the Oklahoma office guys one month – one of who used to be in the U.S. national swimming squad. He joined me and my office buddy in our ‘lunchtime legends’ pool session one day and proceeded to blow us out of the water – going back and forth like a White pointer on cruise control without even raising a proverbial sweat. He told us later he used to have ‘drag races’ in the pool with the great man himself – Spitzie. Now he tells us!!

Anyway, a top day.