Olympic Avoidance Log
Triple Jump: Keeping up my strong middle section with a brief accidental flight of fancy on the Triple Jump. You see Triple Jump was one of the few sports that my games teachers groomed me for. Looking back it was a bit cynical, but at the time I was suddenly pleased that there was a sport I apparently could do that the reasons behind picking a short-arse for the triple jump was never clear. The truth was, I was one of the few people in my school who could actually remember how to DO the triple jump. You know, when to hop, when to skip and when to jump. Despite it being rather easy and the name having a clue in it, everyone else would put in extra steps or muck up the bits in between.
So I spent a few weeks training with the long jump boys, thinking that if I remained the best at this sport, I would get to go to the District Games (the aim of any comp boy at the time*) and my PE report might not be A (Effort) 5 (Attainment) that year. Unfortunately it was not to be. I was a sap, a patsy. My job was to goad one of the long jump boys into thinking “Long jump is a bit competitive, I bet I can beat Baran at the Triple Jump as long as I learn how to do it”. And trust me, that is not a bet any bookmaker would take.
So this morning two minutes of my time were taken by looking at the silly distances they are jumping these days. 18 metres? Why of course. They are still using sand to measure it though. Which prompted me to think, what happens if they fart after they have landed. Would that count as part of the follow-through (for that matter…) Has anyone ever lost the triple jump due to a powerful guff pushing the sand back?
TOTAL SO FAR: JUST UNDER TWENTY EIGHT OLYMPIAN MINUTES
*Mainly because you got a day off of School for it. The teachers never understood that it would be a great incentive to make people good at actual school-stuff, if you got a day off for it. Imagine how pissed off I was finishing the maths textbooks (and hence the syllabus) six month early, to discover they could always find me more Maths. I wanted the time off.