Olympics

I know everyone will be waiting for the garden update. I opened up the Guardian Guide on Saturday and was staggered to find my blog NOT listed in the best of the internet section. Staggered. But, I’ll persevere and part 2 will follow later this week. Then The Guardian will come a runnin.
This blog concerns the Olympics. Woo, eh?

I’ve always enjoyed the Olympics, which may seem obvious for a guy who loves sport but it goes a bit deeper than that.
There is obviously the chance to view sports you rarely see on TV, and the BBC always try to help you understand - after watching the France V Iceland handball final yesterday I think I understand the rules of that odd game. I now know that archery is great to watch, whilst shooting, its gunpowder filled cousin, is dull as hell.
Some other sports still retain an infuriating mystery about them. Why was one man’s pommel horse routine better than another’s? Why, when two dives look identical, will the Chinese diver always get the better marks? What the fuckery is Greco-Roman wrestling all about?
But the BBC tried to explain, and admitted when they were a bit baffled themselves.
If I think of my favourite things about being British I think the BBC would get in the top ten. The Olympic coverage showed everything I like about the BBC; curious, informative, diverse, helpful, cynical when it needs to be yet unafraid to be almost childlike in its enthusiasm, the BBC is surely unmatched in its coverage of huge events like these world games. Almost every pundit was superb, from the wonderfully gracious and humble Michael Johnson to the giddy sailing correspondent whose name deserts me right now. I’ll miss these people chatting to me about sailing boats, boxing styles or triple twists in a tuck position with half pike. Not one of them talked down to the ignorant punter at home, every single one of them seemed warm, informative and passionate.
The BBC coverage oddly made me proud of being British, something that I find hard to admit in text, as I often feel slightly embarrassed of my nationality when it comes to sporting events. Well, football mainly.
Yet, whereas my fellow Brits often leave me cringing with how they react to football, the Olympic sports are totally different. It seems we can cheer on our swimmers without wanting to punch Michael Phelps in his goggles, and I don’t think there has ever been hooliganism at a hockey match.
So it feels nice to root for the Brits without it tipping over into xenophobia, but the biggest difference is that you actually feel you’re rooting for decent people. I wouldn’t be alone if I said that it is often hard to like footballers, and they’re often the total opposite of an Olympian.
Footballers earning over 100k a week will throw their toys out of the pram if denied a further 5k a week, Cristiano Ronaldo will interrupt a memorial for the Munich air disaster because it’s impacting on his spit roasting time, Ashley Cole cheats on his wife and turns his back on his childhood club but then claims to be a victim in his “autobiography”, the list could go on and on. I haven’t even touched on the fact that the England captain is a hateful cunt of a human being.
At the other end of the scale you have people like Rebecca Adlington, who at the age of 19 gets the top level of government funding (only about 15 grand a year), but who remains utterly dedicated to her sport and wonderfully unaffected. 400m Olympic champion Christine Ohuruogu combines her training with a thesis on the etymology of swearwords, whilst double Olympic champion Bradley Wiggins is a hopelessly obsessed Mod. The sacrifices all have made to be the best at their sport is nothing to do with money and it makes for far more grounded human beings.
Hell, the cash will flow to all of them now but I’m confident that they’ll stay largely unaffected by the riches. They certainly fucking deserve the money more than most Premiership footballers.

I love the human interest stories, the German weightlifter who dedicated his gold to his late wife, the Russian and Georgian shooter who think that by standing on the same podium at an Olympic games they can stop a war back in their own countries, the Italian shooter whose reaction to winning a silver was to cry his eyes out for half an hour, the despair of other nations in the cycling…again, I could go on and on.
I love the medal table and how obsessed I come in working out if we can beat the Aussies in the table (we did) and whether there is any chance in staying ahead of the Russians (there wasn’t).
I love the fact we get to host it next time and even though we won’t be technically perfect (the communists will always do the best ceremonies), we’ll display a bit of humour, self-deprecation and playful cynicism that was missing from Beijing.
I love the Olympics, obviously. It stupidly leaves me feeling optimistic for humanity.