I hate the Olympics. Once every four years the world seems to stop –for some sort of celebration of fair play, school bullies and bizarre stage management. This seems all kinds of wrong to me, particularly in the middle of a balmy summer that grotesque mutants and posh people fill up our television schedules just for being quite good at something which is useless. Bookend the whole affair with staggering jingoism and an opening ceremony which is the last vestige of hyper-interpretive dance and I really do start to wonder the gawmping masses watching are actually pod people. So someone can throw a stick quite far. SO WHAT!
Sadly it appears that on Freaky Trigger, I am alone in this view. And so it falls to me, sipping my special edition Olympic Hatorade, to announce the comprehensive Olympic coverage on Freaky Trigger. You can get your Olympic fix from the BBC in High Definition, or on the radio in considerably less definition, but the proper Olympic analysis lives here. Basically, when I use the word comprehensive, I mean more in the sense that the Daily Mail uses it when discussing the education system: patchy, run-down and not fit for purpose. Think of our coverage as comprehenxive compared to the Eton of the BBC. And I know which I would rather be (and who I would rather punch in the face).
We have a crack team of reporters who wish they were in Beijing covering the athletics, posh sports and someone who owned a BMX once which qualifies them to comment on that. The anchor of our commentary will come from Olympic statistician extraordinaire Carsmile Steve, who will almost certainly mention the 1912 Swimming Obstactle course at least once. Talking of swimming Kat will be talking about this pointless splasharound and perhaps explaining why freestyle has not been renamed front crawl. Sarah will be looking at synchro swimming amongst other aspects and our own BAGA boy Alan will admire the young boys in The gymnastics. This is just part of the apparently keen and reverential coverage FT will give you starting next week on the 08/08/08*.
As for me, I will be trying to avoid the Olympics yet again. I will be trying to beat my own personal best of seeing only fifty nine minutes of coverage of the Athens Olympics – the edited highlights of which can be found on FT. So even if you are sharing my antipathy towards this celebration of 99.999% of the world being rubbish at stuff, you should still be able to enjoy FT during August. I’ll be in the cinema lots.
*The number eight is very auspicious in Chinese, as the word for eight sounds a bit like the word for money. So in Chinese, the Olympics are starting on Money Money Money!