Well, it’s been very, very interesting so far, yawn, yawn and thrice yawn.  One of our diving pair decided to wait right up until the last of their dives to cock it up, making team GB steam into fourth position.  And I still have a few issues over what exactly constitutes and Olympic sport.  For instance – the sandbox leap… 

I don’t care how long they’ve trained for or how far they can jump, it’s still a bunch of twits playing in the sand with a crowd watching on at the end of the day.  I mean, why pay 300 quid to watch that, when you could set up a similar event in your own back garden. 

And don’t get me started on the triple jump.  Much the same event, except you’ll need a bigger garden.  And just for the record it’s not a triple jump, it’s a hop, then a skip followed by another hop.  If you favour shattering one or both knees, put your name down for this game.

Rowing next: no, no. no, no, no.  This is a leisure activity which takes place on a boating lake or somewhere on the Thames.  Hockey: a game played at some schools.  Cycling: ha ha hahahahahahahahahaaa, you’ve gotta be joking!  If ever there was a game to be played that’s worthy of a medal for strength and perseverance, the Olympic committee should add ‘getting a job during a recession’ for the next games.  Odds on, we’ll be in a quadruple dip by then. 

Now, from what I can see, the object of being an athlete is to stay healthy and look fit after years of dedicated fasting and exercise.  Of course this does help up their profile and the can sign up for any new adverts, but why do the long distance runners all look as if they’ve just been rescued from Belsen?  Some even do weight lifting while they’re actually running; it’s called the relay race!

We’ve hit the track and field events now, and I’m still not sure who the games are aimed at.  They say the hope is to inspire the young, but which youngsters?  Not all children can step on to the family yacht, take a year off from holidaying and meet some other jolly nice people with the same idea.  Give a kid from Tottenham a foil or a rapier and they won’t have picked up the noble art of fencing over the weekend, you’ll find them stabbing up another kid who stepped into the wrong post code by mistake.

No good comes from competitiveness.  It breeds people who don’t know how to cope with failure – and then they become teachers!  And then the whole sorry cycle starts again.  Learn by failure but don’t make a race out of it.  As long as you’ve tried your best, that’s all that counts. 

www.forwardbipolar.com

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2012 at 12:46 am and is filed under Neils Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.