Getting undressed is the latest Olympics fashion

Getting undressed is the latest Olympics fashion
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Brussels, August 24: It seems everybody is getting naked for the Sydney Games. Even the Belgians are undressing.

Veteran swimmer Brigitte Becue, a former European breaststroke champion, had a fluttering Belgian flag barely covering the essentials.

Nudity has exploded onto the Sports scene lately with stars from Australia to the United States to Europe baring enough to grab the limelight.

In Greece, athletics started out with competitors wearing a loin cloth, but after it was reported that one athlete won a race because he ripped it off halfway through the race before surging ahead, nudity became vogue.

Over the past years, more top athletes have shed their uniforms. There was Marie-Jose Perec, the reigning 200 and 400 Olympic champion from France, in a painted-on uniform.

There was Susen Tiedke, Germany's long jumper, lying naked in a stadium sandpit.

Women's World Cup heroine Brandi Chastain of the US appeared on issue of Gear magazine just before last year's championship in a side shot wearing nothing but a strategically placed soccer ball at her chest.

But nothing has compared with Australia's `Sydney Dream' shots, featuring 29 athletes, men and women, in various states of undress.

And the women's Australian soccer team got all the publicity it wanted with its Mathlida calendar, in which several players posed naked.

``I look at it as art,'' said Belgian sprinter Gevaert. ``The pictures with the Australian and French athletes were very beautiful,'' she told Het Nieuwsblad newspaper.

And she said that with the skin tight suits and all, it really doesn't make that much of a difference.

``I already run in these tight tops and shorts, so it doesn't bother me,'' Gevaert said.