Olympic Education

The thing I love most about the Olympic Games, all Olympic Games, is their ability to draw you into sports that at all other times exist on the very edge of your consciousness. Over the course of the past fortnight I have been enthralled in contests in sports I know very little about; taekwondo, canoeing, boxing, BMX have all held me captive on my sofa.

As a result I can subsequently justify the hours spent using the red button to follow everything from Handball to the Heptathlon as an educational venture. The Olympic Games has taught me things, and here are just a few of them;

1. On Their Own, Britons Aren’t That Good
However, throw in a bike, or a boat, or a horse and we’ll meet you on the podium.

2. Water Polo is Brutal
I turned it on just as the camera zoomed in to see an Italian substitute having their nose reset. Oh, and this was the women’s game.

3. Rowers are Posh
All of them, every single one. Britain takes a team of about a hundred of them and not a single dropped a ‘H’ to be found.

4. Gymnastics in Volleyball Must be the Norm
Women’s Pool Match; Brazil versus Cuba. One of the Brazilian team keeps the ball alive by simultaneously performing a ‘dig’ and the splits... the commentators are unmoved.

5. Olympic Archers are Damn Good
Coverage of the archery begins with a split screen of archer and target, and as this the same manner in which darts is televised my brain tends to compute the distance between the two objects on a similar ratio to that in darts. One panning shot later and I’m blown away, the targets are placed at one end of an arena, and the archers take up a position on the Mongolian border.

6. Commentators Swap Shifts
I can only assume that this is the reason why silver spoon gargling voice of equestrian Michael Tucker was to be found commentating on the Water Polo. Unless of course at a BBC planning meeting a typo omitted the word ‘water’. The result was pure Alan Partridge as Tucker morphed every statement into a question for his expert co-commentator; “Oh, and that was a great... er... lob shot, was it?”

7. World Sport Needs More James DeGales
Appearing on the BBC’s final Games Today show after his Boxing Gold James DeGale took Gabby Logan a flower from his winners’ bouquet, his delivery, not quite as chivalrous. “You’re a pretty girl innit, you get things like that”