on your marks
At the risk of incurring the wrath of the great-unwashed, I have to admit the Olympics leave me a little cold. As a lifetime sports participant it frustrates me that precious little funding appears to filter down to either the young or those involved at grass-roots level, and believe me, I’ve tried & tried to unlock some of that national cash, but to no avail. Admittedly, it probably doesn’t help my mood that, as a squash player, our Olympic involvement has been poo-pooed by all manner of ‘sports’ including beach volleyball, Greco wrestling and wall-climbing.
To my limited mind, these grand charades highlight the winning nature of the system: Russia has one state-sponsored system that elevates their athletes to international recognition, we have another: Russia’s is based on doping, ours is based on money. It should come as no surprise that, before the National Lottery, Great Britain finished a lowly 36th in Atlanta’s 1996 games with a mere 15 medals (one Gold, eight Silver, six Bronze). Furthermore, it is widely accepted that the whole aim of this funding is to create not only a winning athlete but, more importantly, a winning system, a conveyor-belt, or more aptly a treadmill, where a high degree of succession planning takes place and where athletes seamlessly transition one another. Look at where the lottery money has gone and you can see where the success has occurred – cycling, rowing, diving, swimming and a few blue-riband track events.
So, outed as a true sporting killjoy, you’d be forgiven for anticipating my expletive-peppered response when asked if I was actually enjoying the Olympics? However, rather than climbing atop the soapbox and venting my spleen, I took a deep breath and thought about the question for a few seconds, and do you know what, you’d have to be a cold-hearted inhabitant of this bleak island not to be whooping with delight. Adam Peaty, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah, Andy Murray, Max Whitlock, Justin Rose, Katherine Grainger, Geraint Thomas, Jo Pavey, Tom Daley, Adam Gemili et al. Good on the lot of ‘em.
Mind, Lizzie Armistead, should not have been there. No-one in their right-mind believes she is guilty of anything more than carelessness but them’s the rules, Lizzie. By invoking a somewhat dubious technicality, she has made a mockery of the anti-doping regime and just imagine, if you will, our response had a Russian cyclist offered the same excuse for missing a drugs-test, of leaving her phone on silent! Doh. In the end, I was relieved she finished in fifth place and kept off the podium. I think she was as well.
However, there is one element I’ve not particularly enjoyed, that of the commentators’ role, especially when tasked with conducting the obligatory post-event interview. Stuffed with the same old platitudes & clichés, it’s rare these interviews provide insight into anything more than they’ve all worked really hard, have not had a day-off in living memory, miss their family, sacrifice endlessly, worship team members and have done it all for the love of their country. For all their fame & fortune (not to mention perfect abs) they don’t half ramble on a bit. But this isn’t the athlete’s fault, it’s the interviewer’s.
TV commentators don’t ask questions any more, they make statements. Big, grandiose, stadium-shattering statements. And as a result, sports men and women (with the notable exception of old-hand Bradley Wiggins) look boring, clumsy and formulaic as they have little alternative but to spout banalities in response to the verbose outpouring they’re faced with. If you don’t believe me, listen closely to a post-event interview, and count how many times you hear the words how, what, who, when, where, will etc. Trust me, you won’t hear many.
Having spent a lifetime in recruitment, these are words that were drilled into me in order to craft lovely open-ended questions, ones where you just might elicit some interesting, unique and genuinely beneficial snippet. Instead, you’ll hear the interviewer take centre stage and display their vast knowledge and emotional understanding before pressing the microphone into the athlete’s face, whose only option is to agree “Yeah definitely” before mumbling the bleedin’ obvious as everything’s already been said. And because there’s no focus to the interview, they feel compelled to carry on talking…. and talking. The lucky ones get interrupted with another bombastic mirror-rehearsed missive which mercifully brings the interaction to a grateful close.
Without a doubt however, the strangest commentary I’ve heard over recent weeks is that of Radio Four’s ‘Test Match Special’ Jonathan Agnew, who has been tasked with providing the expertise to the art of dressage. WTF. Firstly, there’s a current test match series taking place in the UK with Pakistan and secondly, by his own admission, until a couple of months ago he knew absolutely nothing of the event or the discipline. I swear I heard Aggers say that one of the horses was doing ‘strange little pirouettes and funny hops & jumps’. No sh* Sherlock. Whatever next, ‘Blowers’ Blofeld on Michael Phelps cupping quackery or ‘Bumbles’ Lloyd on the Russian drug of choice?
I’ll leave you with the Clare Balding’s words of wisdom that ‘all Olympic athletes want to final in the hope that they will medal and eventually podium’. Surely winning would suffice! They think it’s all over. I sometimes wish it were.
