Post Olympic Blues.

So that’s it. All over. No more summer Olympics for another four years. Some bright spark had the idea of awarding the next games to Los Angeles, a city which will very probably be on fire by the time we get to 2028, so you never know, this could be the last summer Olympics we’ll get to see without wearing fallout goggles. Which would be a shame. For some reason I always thought the games lasted longer than two weeks (it does, but for arguments sake let’s be honest: it’s basically two weeks with a bonus day and some filler) but I think that’s a mixture of mind trickery, false nostalgia and the inevitable descending veil of sadness that the whole thing has gone now and there’s no way of getting it back. If it were up to me the Olympics would last twice as long but include half as much, because that way you could see more of the things you like the most and completely avoid the events that make you wonder why they ever existed in the first place – fencing springs to mind and, now that I’ve seen enough of it, dressage, which is little more than making your horse do as it is told for as long as possible and praying they won’t be caught short half way through and do a big horse poo all over the gravel.

Where were we? Oh yes, something other than horse poo. I think what I’m trying to say is that, when push comes to shove, I’m missing the Olympic Games rather a lot, though I imagine it will pass in time. Tomorrow should do it. Naturally, there are some things which I’ll be glad to see the back of: the usual overdose of Claire Balding, interviews with athletes who have just lost and are crying, terrible time filling exercises involving an old athlete and a new athlete talking to each other about how inspiring/inspired they are, swimmers being interviewed the second they leave the pool and are clearly so out of breath they can barely string two coherent words together, watching Matthew Pinsent sweating bullets in a series of shirts that just don’t work on a man of his physical heft, showboating Americans, blank faced Chinese robots, British athletes being enormously over-hyped and then losing miserably, Matt Baker speaking at any point during the gymnastics, judo, and the pointless switching from BBC1 to BBC2 (to accommodate the news: murder, rioting, racism, sex trafficking, tragedies pertaining to small boats, corruption, starvation, climate change and a reminder that a couple from South Shields have just won a bronze medal for synchronised knitting).

But it would be churlish and untrue to say that the whole experience hasn’t been fabulous. Some days I didn’t catch much at all but other days I watched so much I started to feel sorry for the sofa by mid-afternoon. I often found myself welling up at medal ceremonies or watching some skinny little thing, covered in parcel tape, perform a high dive so complex they may have well been a human Catherine wheel. The punditry and commentary are always going to be a mixed bag but there should be praise in abundance for the likes of Michael Johnson, who is incapable of uttering a boring sentence and should be fast-tracked to British citizenship so he can be our next Prime Minister. Denise Lewis comes a close second, and not just because I met her once and can safely she say she is a very lovely person; quite a handy athlete too. And now what are we left with? The rest of summer back on BBC1, who sell themselves as the most respected broadcasting outfit in the world, has been especially curated for any miserable, aim-low-you-can-always-sink-further bastard who missed what was on the day before the Olympics started: this morning offered a dazzling cornucopia of mind broadening magic – Animal Park, Countryfile Treasures, Homes Under The Hammer, Bargain Hunt, Money For Nothing, Escape To The Country, The Repair Shop, The Finish Line, Pointless, the One Show and Eastenders. That’s what they put on to replace the greatest sporting show on earth! Back to normal. Back to black. Back to bullshit. And that’s why the Olympics are such a tonic, fencing included. If I had my way there would be an Olympics every year, but not every month; that would be tedious and mind-numbing. I suspect, if you’ve got this far, you know exactly how that feels.

G B Burton. 12.08.2024