"There is a truth to sport, a purity, a drama, an intensity. A spirit that makes it irresistable to take part in, and irresistable to watch. In every Olympic sport there is all that matters in life.

And one day we will tell our children, and our grandchildren, than when our time came we did it right."
- Seb Coe, opening the 2012 games

Monday 30 July 2012

Five Rings 29/7


Blue - The first weekend of the games has been a quiet one for the hosts on the medal table - just one gold and one silver so far.  The Chinese top the table early on, but best opening weekend for me goes to Italy, who have already notched 2 golds and a total of 7 medals.  Forza Italia!  Full table is found here.

Black - A great performance from Becky Adlington to win bronze in her weaker event.  Expectations were high after her gold in the 400m four years ago, but this time was always likely to be a more difficult task.  Adlington's time for bronze, in a modern fabric swimsuit, was over 0.2 seconds faster than the time she swam for gold in Beijing - when she was in the now-outlawed hi-tech swimsuits which saw records fall at an unbelievable rate.






The only disappointment for me was Radio 5 Live's commentary.  With the girls on the final length of the race, commentator Bob Ballard gave up his main responsibility entirely, declaring 'We don't care' about the battle between France's Camille Muffat and America's Alison Schmitt for their event's highest honour, because he only wanted to talk about Adlington finishing third.  An understandable lapse of any pretence of neutrality, but a bad one, and disrespectful not just to the swimmers fighting for gold, but to any French or American listeners.  We had to wait almost twenty seconds after the race finished before Ballard bothered to mention who had won.

The BBC's coverage of the games has excellent depth to the main and most televisual events, but from what I've seen and heard so far, there's a lot of discussion about those select few at the expense of actual coverage of some of the lower-profile competitions.

Red -  It turns out Spain's footballers aren't completely invincible.  They may have won three major titles in a row, but the Spanish Olympic football journey is over after just two games - slipping to defeats against Japan and, tonight, Honduras!  Joder.

Gold - After having removed baseball and softball from the Olympic programme for these games, the IOC replaced them on the list of their sports with rugby sevens and golf.  Sadly, rather than get them in for this Olympics, in the country which invented both games, they did not introduce the new arrivals until the 2016 competition, which will take place in that hot-bed of rugby and golf, Brazil.  Not the best timing.

Green - If you think I'm an Olympic addict, check out the curious case of Louisa Thomas from American sports site Grantland.  She confesses to a complete addiction.  I admit that however much I love the games, I have never asked for my ashes to be scattered at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne.

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