Olympic Preview: WEIGHTLIFTING
Some of Freaky Trigger’s Olympic coverage, you will have realised reading Kat’s swimming piece, is being provided by writers who are genuine experts and enthusiasts in their field - as well as possessing a gift of bringing the drama of sport to you the reader.
Others, however, have chosen sports based on what was left over when everyone else had picked. Since this is very much how my participation in sports has always worked it seemed a fair method. Thus I introduce myself to you now as Freaky Trigger’s newly appointed weightlifting expert.
Weightlifting as a sport is both simple and mysterious. The simplicity comes from the fact that every single event in every single category at the Olympics is the same: no variance in victory conditions, rules or tactics, just in how enormous the participants are. The mystique comes from the fact that it’s never on the TV except when the Olympics come round, when it seems to fill up the whole schedule. Also, Britain don’t take part in it* so when I was small it seemed doubly baffling, as it was always there and yet nobody had anything much to say about it. It was dominated back then by the Eastern Bloc countries who were Our Enemies: while we concentrated on breeding a race of lanky fops good only for running away the iron men of Bulgaria and the DDR were busy practicing by lifting whole tanks. … read on …
Wall-E is kind of the kids sequel version of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. In Idiocracy the world its being swamped by rubbish, and everyone is become slack jawed servants of a dumbed down society. In Wall-E the humans have left a waste strewn Earth and are drifting around in space morbidly obese in their hover chairs (at least until the idiosyncratic Hello Dolly loving robot comes and reminds them of their own humanity). Similar plots, though only one has a monster truck battle. And it isn’t the kids film!
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