Waterworld was rubbish partially because swimming isn’t all that dramatic. Even if you have gills like Kevin Costner. The British swimmers and divers may have gills for all I care, though that may be cheating (again I wonder about the IOC’s line on evolutionary advantages). Anyway what I remembered today was that Olympic Avoidance gets significantly harder when Britain wins medals. It invades the normally agreed non-sport sections of the news. So I saw our swimmers getting gold and bronze in a stupid medley race. I mean they don’t get the athletes to do 100m running backwards, so why should swimmers get to mix it up? As it was I felt a little sorry for the foreign swimmer who was the silver meat in the British medal sandwich. A few tenths of a second is unfortunate. Nevertheless, jingoism ensues, and apparently Hazel Irving got to talk about shoes with Rebecca Adlington. I get the feeling Irving wants to go over to present What Not To Wear with all her apparent fashion talk.
Except jingoism doesn’t completely ensue because our great young hope Tom Daley came last (or as the BBC news liked to put it, eighth out of eight) in the 10m Synchronised Diving. Why is it assumed that synchronicity is a quality that should only be attached to water based events I don’t know. Synchronised archery would be good, or synchro javelin. Anyway out fourteen year old great white hope was gently pilloried in the press for coming last. With no real consideration for abilities he has shown getting there, that coming last can happen in sport and THE SYNCHRO ISN’T EVEN HIS MAIN EVENT. Way to run down the kid before his actual event comes up. Mind you if his diving partner runs him down too, what to do (team jealousy). The salient point I noticed about this partnership between 14 and 26 year old was the difference in physical size. They weren’t exactly synchronised to start off with.
So as you can see, via the news and London Lite I probably got two minutes of sodden, sodding coverage.
FIVE OLYMPIC MINUTES – Well on target for a personal best.