It’s not often you’re publicly abused before breakfast. But that’s what happened after my Today Show appearance when I exclaimed that I didn’t understand the huge deal about Cadel Evans and thought the coverage of sporting victories was disproportionate. My skin is pretty thick but I will admit the abuse came as a bit of a shock.

Not to my husband. When I called him on my way into work, reeling from the complete slagging that was happening on Twitter, he said “What happened on the show?” and I said “Cadel” and he said “Oh no babe, you didn’t do your ‘sportspeople aren’t heroes’ thing, did you?”

Um, yes. I did.

I didn’t wake up on a hobby horse. I noted that Cadel Evans had won the Tour de France and I thought “oh, that’s nice for him” and that was about it.

My first hint that I was out of step with popular opinion came when the Today Show producer called to tell me about the topics for this morning’s What’s Making News segment.

“Karl wants to do the whole thing on Cadel.” What? The whole segment? Really?

Then, I watched from the make-up room as Karl called for everyone on the set, including Lisa, Dickie and Alicia at the desk, to rise for the national anthem to celebrate Cadel’s win.

There was talk of a public holiday.

And that’s when I started to become really baffled.

The rest is a blur, possibly a nightmare and certainly something I wish hadn’t happened because nobody needs to be called 500 different awful names before they’ve eaten their Weetbix.

This is our segment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=s7las7vH3nU

This was my general point:

Good on Cadel. I’m sure it was an achievement and great that he won. I’m not taking anything away from his physical sporting achievement. It’s impressive to be the best in the world at something.

But I’ve always had a problem with the way Australian sportspeople are revered as heroes and worshipped above every other profession.

To me, heroes are people who help other people or who somehow work selflessly to benefit others. Nurses, doctors, scientists working to cure diseases, those who work with sick people or disadvantaged people, fire fighters and those who risk their lives in wars or their daily jobs, those who volunteer…..you get the drift.

That’s my definition of hero. I’m not saying it should be yours.

Clearly, I am in the vast, vast minority here (I certainly know that after today having been called a dog, a bitch, unAustralian, a stupid, ignorant fool, told I should lose my job, fuck off and shut the hell up, go back to writing about lipstick……and that is not even the worst of it).

But sportspeople – who spend their lives honing their physical skills with vast support from sponsors and teams of support people – well, I don’t think the word ‘heroes’ applies to them particularly.

I think pursuing a life doing something you’re good at for the benefit of yourself is not heroic. It’s not a BAD thing, I’m not dissing Cadel (of course not!) but the idea that a sports person should be idolised because they can ride far or jump high or swim fast is, to me, a bit odd. I guess I’m just flagging the fact that if you do well in sport, the country and the media stop to worship you in a way that doesn’t happen to anyone else for doing anything else.