Sydney, May 23: The Aussie cossie, or traditional brief swimsuit, is being discarded more and more frequently as sportspeople Down Under continue to bare all in the name of promotion.Sydney 2000 Olympics hopefuls are the latest group of athletes to demonstrate their naked ambition in print in an updated version of Black and White magazine's Olympic Dream series.The ``Sydney Dream'' edition, launched on Tuesday, features 29 athletes including 1,500-metre swimming World champion Grant Hackett, pole vaulter Tatiana Grigorieva, sprinter Tania van Heer and triathlete Loretta Harrop.The ``Atlanta Dream'' edition, launched before the 1996 summer Games, created a stir but was a huge ratings success with the first print run selling out within hours and total sales exceeding 50,000.Publisher Studio Magazines has increased the Sydney Dream print run to 100,000, confident that having the September 15-October 1 Olympics in Sydney will boost sales.Almost half of the athletes featured participate in sport contested in the pool or on the beach, including beach volleyballers, divers, the Australian men's waterpolo team and synchronized swimmers.Black and White editor Karen-Jane Eyre said about 50 athletes were approached and most had no problems about posing naked.``Generally speaking, athletes are not shy - they're proud of their bodies,'' she said.''We made decisions based on our previous experience. we already had a feeling of some people who wouldn't participate,'' said Eyre.``The obvious example is (World 400 metres champion) Cathy Freeman, who loves what we do and has appeared in our sports magazine but we already know she is very shy and she won't do nudes.Hackett, who posed inside a purpose-built fish tank, described the photo shoot as ``one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.''``Not many things compare with training - but this was a huge challenge,'' said the 20-year-old Hackett. ``For a start, walking around nude was really weird. I'm not someone who is 100 percent comfortable with it.''Hackett complained of looking ``like a prune'' after submerging himself in cold water for 20 minutes and having to hold his breath under water for 30 seconds at a time.Last year the National women's soccer team generated unprecedented publicity for the sport in Australia by releasing the Matildas calendar, which featured several players posing naked. Demand for the Matildas calendar outstripped supply.
