Sport again! – My cunning plan to enjoy the Olympics, and why it’s going to fail

There are various reasons for taking an interest in the Olympics, and the main one is if it gives you pleasure.

But there are perhaps a few reasons for not caring.  Before Rio, prolific blogger Ian Paul posted this, https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/why-i-wont-be-watching-the-olympics/pointing out the huge environmental and financial cost of hosting the games. And at the end he links to another post, which makes the obvious point that, well, Team GB wins lots of medals in cycling, partly because we have talented and very hardworking athletes… but also because we spend huge amounts of money on the sport and especially on technically amazing speedy bikes.

At the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 (hmm, 21) GB finished in fourth place in the medals table. Britain does not have the fourth highest population in the world; and I see no reason to imagine that we are the fourth most sporty. We are rich, and we have a lottery.

So in one sense I don’t really want to watch or support the Olympics; but… this seems rather a joyless and puritanical attitude to something that will excite many people whatever I think, and does have some good internationalist aspects. (Who doesn’t cheer if say Haiti or South Sudan wins a medal?)

And although our British coverage is very parochial, the Olympics also remind us that our own favourite sports – football, tennis, golf, athletics, artistic gymnastics – aren’t the only ones that people care about. It is at the Olympics that we discover about bobsleigh and curling, handball, canoe slalom, shooting and ski jumping. Or at least we learn that they exist, and that foreigners care about them. And we do learn to admire Simone Biles and Leon Marchand.

So this year… I eccentrically decided to be mildly interested in the British team – but to take more notice of a select set of six sports, chosen almost, but not quite, at random.

These are:

Hockey. I’m only choosing one sport that has a whole lengthy schedule of group stage and knockout out rounds leading to a final. I’ve selected hockey because a) it’s more often thought of as a girls’ sport and occasionally features in girls’ school stories; b) it’s popular in Pakistan; c) I was once taught economics by a GB hockey Olympian; and d) long ago I played it briefly, very badly.

Rhythmic Gymnastics (not to be confused with Artistic Gymnastics.) AG is the gymnastics we know – vault, floor, pommel horse, etc. RG is where women perform acrobatically to music with four different items: ribbon, two clubs, ball and hoop. On the rare occasions I’ve managed to watch some (London 2012, when the BBC showed everything, see below), I’ve found it stunningly beautiful.

Javelin. As I’ve mentioned just a few times, I’m hoping to publish the fourth Tale from Ragaris fairly soon. Part of the plot concerns an annual event known as the Verian Contest – a kind of combination of single-nation Olympics and Eisteddfod. Three of my characters enter the competition, two of them in singing/reciting events, but the third in javelin/spear-throwing. So I’d better take an interest in that.

Those three were fairly easy to select, but more randomly:

Taekwondo. I might as well choose one fighting sport, and I’m not going for boxing. I know even less about it than judo, so hey.

Sailing. This may be a mistake, as there are of course huge numbers of sailing events, and they all take a long time. I said “take an interest,” I didn’t say “watch the whole thing.” But our family loves Arthur Ransome, after all.  And finally…

Modern Pentathlon. These weird combination sports that one has to relearn each time always spark some interest; and of them all (decathlon, heptathlon, triathlon….) Modern Pentathlon is surely the wackiest. Designed I believe on the basis of the sporting skills needed by a gentleman, it gives us fencing, swimming, shooting, running and horse-riding (not on your own horse.) What a contest! In addition I have family interest in fencing and horses…

So there we are. If you want to know more about any of the above,  go here: https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/sports

This was my plan.

BUT in making it, as hinted above, I’d been calculating according to the BBC coverage in 2012. There is still a lot of coverage on free-to-view… but, as the BBC explains:

“Since the Winter Olympics in 2018 what’s changed is that if you are really into a specific sport that isn’t the main story of the day, we may not be able to broadcast it live.

We will still update you on all the stories of the day, but if it’s wall-to-wall Greco-Roman Wrestling you’re looking for, then Discovery+ will be the place to watch it.”

For Greco-Roman wrestling, read Rhythmic Gymnastics and Taekwondo… I’m not prepared to pay money to the Discovery Channel. Hey ho.

How are you all doing?

Love from the PPI Blogger

PS And of course despite the above intentions I have watched a few GB medal-winning performances over the last few days…