Although Botswana would have seemed like paradise to my parents when they arrived, in reality it was just a dust bowl at the time. There were few paved roads in the town and even fewer amenities. Although there were a couple of play schools in town, the teachers at the play schools barely had an education above a play school level themselves which was a little scary as my parents wanted us to progress past playschool before we hit 15 years of age…  not to be put off, without any experience whatsoever, mum opened up her own play School and the three of us spent the next 4 years at home!

 

This would typify the next few years of mum’s life; if it wasn’t there or needed doing,   she would find a way to do it. Having left school at the age of 16 to go nursing, and having travelled around the world are so many years at an early age with her father who was in the British army visiting the colonies, Botswana was the perfect place for the entrepreneur that mum was already growing into. The play school soon became a place for the expatriate community to send their kids and became the premier play School in Botswana (not that hard I grant you, but it was a good start and kept the family occupied until we hit junior school).

 

It appeared at this time that mom was not the only person in the family that had an entrepreneurial streak running through her; the family found that out the hard way that I was a chip off the old entrepreneurial block when I decided to open up my own hairdressing salon at the play School (think Zohan without the skill).  My father’s boss, a complete wally, had a son at the play School who was the same age as me; I decided to take him behind the back of the house and give him a new look. It appears that those safety scissors that you give to kids in play school aren’t quite as safe as they might first appear! When the kid’s folks came by to pick up “tufty” (the poor little bugger looked like a tennis ball that had gone through a meat grinder) a little later, the mum burst into tears and my dad’s boss had a right go at him. Although I got a good telling off in front of the kid’s parents, I knew what I had done couldn’t have been that bad as my parents started wetting themselves laughing after the boss had left! That was my last attempt at hairdressing until I started shaving my own head 30 years later!

 

www.sportingconnections.com

Sunshine Coast-based adventure seeker Oscar Boult launched the sports networking

website, www.sportingconnections.com  and it already looks set to keep pace with the online trend made popular by Myspace and Facebook.

 

Tapping into our nature for mateship and our reputation as ‘the great sporting nation’, the website attracted more than 1500 members in its first month, making it one of the fastest growing sites in the world. It seems funny that no-one has thought of the idea before now, but Oscar says while he has travelled the world making new mates, it wasn’t until he was a newcomer to the Sunshine Coast in 2006 that he had the brainwave for a website connecting sportspeople. “I was driving back to Brisbane for a round of golf with friends thinking ‘there must be a better way to meet people’ and the idea of a purpose-driven website specifically designed to connect sporty types just evolved from there.” 

 

The rugged looking South African spent 13 years criss-crossing the globe in search of the next great adrenalin rush and found himself competing in the local Ironman event in Switzerland, hitting the ski slopes in Europe and diving from a yacht in the Caribbean. He has tried just about all of the 60 sports on his site. “Offering all sports in all countries globally, the website connects amateurs and professionals alike, from clubs and teams, coaches and trainers to individuals seeking play-buddies,” Oscar explains. “You can also set up games or training sessions, create new teams, chat in forums, or get-together to watch sporting events.”

Easy and free to use, there are already 100 international events listed. Members can submit events searchable by sport, date and distance. “The Event listings range from someone wanting to throw a ball around at their local beach or park on a weekend to pro-events like the Geneva Marathon,” Oscar said. Seems getting out and creating your own fun with like-minds this summer just got easier. Simply log on, search for players, drop them a line and go. www.sportingconnections.com            

After a month on a passenger liner with mum dealing with a couple of little brats trying to fling themselves overboard, the family arrived in Cape Town and, after disembarking and going through the usual hassle of customs, we jumped on the next train bound for Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, our home for the next 12 years.

 

Botswana was an amazing place to grow up and was (and still is) one of the few success stories in Africa. They had\have a strong economy, a peaceful culture, and are proud owners of the richest diamond mine in the world (http://www.khulsey.com/jewelry/diamond_mines_botswana.html). The Africans in Botswana are very different to the rest of Africa in that they have always been a peace-loving and relaxed culture (with the odd bit of witch-doctoring here and there). Compare this to their neighbour South Africa (where we moved to from Botswana later on) where the Xhosa’s and Zulus have been fighting for hundreds of years and still continue to slaughter each other to this day; or to Zimbabwe, another neighbour, where the country lies in ruin under a mad dictator, and you will realise just what a gem of a place Botswana actually is… a real diamond in the rough so to speak.

 

The other amazing thing about Botswana is the weather: if you want summer year round then this is the place to be. The average temperature in summer sits around 40-44 Celsius; I remember spending entire days in the swimming pool when it got up into the 50’s on occasion. I am not sure growing up in this sort of heat was conducive to comfortable living when I moved over to the UK in later years when I often thought I would freeze to death while half the people around me were wearing T-shirts. On the other hand, when it comes to doing sport in the heat, I love it; it seems that the hotter it gets the more of an advantage I have over my fellow competitors who seems to die once temps hit the 30’s… and once it gets over 40C I am in my element!

 

Our first house in Botswana was a comparative mansion to where we had been living in the UK; it had two bedrooms, a study (later converted to a third bedroom upon the arrival of my younger brother, Conrad, 4 years later), a kitchen and separate lounge, and a plot of land that contained… dust! But to my folks it was a real start at a new life and after the row upon row of council housing that they had just left, the open space of Africa seemed like another planet. Oh yes, we also had 2 maids thrown into the deal which took mum a bit of getting used to; I will never forget them as they became my two African mothers, Elda and Rebecca; the patience of these two lovely women was astounding as both myself and my brother are headstrong little buggers at the best of times and no doubt we must have pushed the boundaries at times. But in the years that they brought us up I never remember them for anything more than their beautiful smiles and constant support.

 

To be continued… www.sportingconnections.com

My first memories seem to be of watching my father, wearing a white rugby jersey, crunching someone in a tackle into touch (out of the field of play for the non-rugby playing fraternity) on a dusty field in Botswana, just north of South Africa.

My second memory is that I wanted to be big and muscular, pretty unfortunate really when I was nick-named “Billy Bunter” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bunter) by my parents owing to my skinny legs and huge stomach as a baby; actually, til I was about 7 years old to be honest. Fortunately my huge stomach disappeared at some stage in my childhood and then I was just skinny without the stomach!

 

But back to the very beginning; I was born in Greenwich, London in October of 1974 to Pauline and Neil Boult, a couple of youngsters living in council housing struggling to make ends meet. My mum was a nurse, just getting over having my older brother 18 months previously, and my father a computer programmer working for the local council. My brother, Oliver (who I never got along with until a couple of years ago), was to play a big part in my desire to compete at everything that I came across for the rest of my life, from tiddlywinks to triathlon… but more about that later.

 

My mum had a really tough upbringing; travelling around the world with her Father (who was in the British army, a nasty abusive bugger) and an Irish Catholic mother who would have won the gold medal in consecutive Olympics had the “placing guilt” event ever made the starting line-up! Mum’s upbringing would have a major impact on the family as a whole and a lot the decisions she made throughout the course of our lives can be traced back to her childhood.

 

Mum was my hero growing up and is now my best friend and confidant; without her support I don’t think I would have achieved a lot of what I did. A defining moment later in my life was having her there at the finish line as I completed my first (and so far only) Ironman event in Switzerland in ’98, a memory I will always cherish… she also had to help me walk up and down the stairs to the apartment we had rented in Zurich for the next 4 days when my hips and knees felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to them!

 

With her background of travelling the world as a youngster, mum was aware that there was more to life than a crappy council house in London trying to keep the heating going; she started looking at newspapers for jobs around the world and one day saw an advert that had been posted by the Botswana government. They were looking for programmers for some new systems they were putting in and, after applying on my dad’s behalf, he got the job. So, at 9 months old, I was bundled up with the rest of their belongings and they got on the next boat leaving from London to Africa. To think if she hadn’t been brave enough to make this decision I could have grown up in London and been a “proppa geeza, innit!”.

 

To Africa and beyond… To be continued.

Some people are extraordinary athletes and excel beyond all others (Lance Armstrong springs to mind), others are extraordinarily bad athletes but become famous nonetheless (Eric “the eel” Moussambani from Guinea, the world’s slowest Olympic swimmer)… And then there are the rest of us; I’m one of them, the rest of us!

Several people I have met over the years have suggested that I get my life story down in writing and I finally have the inclination to do so. I ask myself what I hope to achieve by doing this and the first thing that springs to mind is inspiration; if this story inspires even one person to get out there and try something new, to face up to a challenge they have been considering, or even to go for a walk, then I will feel like I have achieved something amazing.

The other reason, which is not quite so spiritual or exciting, is that I have the world’s crappest memory and thought it would be a good time to piece my life together… although this would sound ridiculous to most people, I am going to have to get my passport out once I get to age 18 in order to work out the where, what and how of my life up until today, age 33 and 3 quarters (for the more star struck amongst you I am a Libra).

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Oscar Boult, the guy who started www.sportingconnections.com! This is my life story. I have no idea how long it is going to take, no plan for it other than to tell the truth (I haven’t told anyone some of these stories, even my closest friends) and to find a way to dredge up the memories! Thank you for joining me for the ride!

Hi All

I have decided to write my life story out on the portal page of http://www.sportingconnections.com/component/option,com_portal/Itemid,67/ and will be updating my blog as I do so with each update 

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/u22fvqw2h3” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

I just joined up with Technorati to see how it works, let’s give this a try:

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/u22fvqw2h3” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

This is me learning how to kitesurf… my mate made it into an advert for me; that’s him you can hear giggling!

Check it out, pretty funny

www.sportingconnections.com has added a new sporting events component to it’s ever growing site. Sports events of every kind, and from everywhere in the world, are being added. Feel free to come along and add your own.