1992 and all that

In the run up to the Beijing Games and the start of Final Third’s Olympic Diary I thought it might be apt to kick start the sports blog with my first ever Olympic memories.
Whilst Seoul 1988 exists somewhere in my conscience as hazy as the Beijing smog tainted daylight the first Olympic Games which I genuinely remember are those of Barcelona in 1992. I think the main reason for these game sticking in my mind is that as far as Olympics go it certainly had the best theme tune courtesy of Freddie Mercury and that other woman whose name escapes everyone. As such for those who remember 1992 these Games took place not in Barcelona, but in BAARCALO-O-O-NAA!

And it was not just the theme music that stuck in the memory, there was the health and safety nightmare of the Olympic torch lit by flaming bow and arrow, the, for that time, fancy score graphics with the yellow numbers in a grey oblong box. And even in fashion’s nuclear winter which was the late 1980s and early 1990s the British team managed to produce a classic kit with a band of mini union jacks running down the sides of the athletic vests.

And of course there were British Golds, which as a sports obsessed nine year old, seemed for me the only possible outcome. Despite the achievements of Pinsent and Redgrave all my key memories come from the athletics track, each one of them accompanied by the almost sepia tones of David Coleman’s commentary; “Gunnell leads and goes for it. Gunnell goes for gold and Gunnell gets the gold”. Sixteen years on I still remember this word for word, not to mention; “And Christie comes storming through... its Linford Christie”.

It would not be Britain though if glory were not framed by triumphant failure. I speak of course of Derek Redmond. In his semi-final he pulled up on the back straight with a hamstring injury, but determined to finish he hobbled the remaining 200metres, the last one hundred with the help of his dad, to cross the line in tears. A very personal moment played out in as public a setting as there can be. It’s a shame for Derek Redmond that he was born British and not American; in the US the ensuing ‘triumph over adversity’ style media could have been enough to see him become their first Black president; in the UK he only made it as far as the first black referee on Gladiators.