I managed to avoid all of the Olympics yesterday. It seems a little insensitive to say it, but thanks Russia and Georgia for pushing swimming champs and posh horse riders off of the front pages of even the tabloids.
Of course if Tanya was here she wo[…]

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&#8217[…]

You know how I keep saying I hate the Olympics. Well there is one bit of the Olympics I like, it’s the bit which suggests that there is still room for bonkers artistry and fireworks this a po-faced search for medal Dorado. I have always liked openi[…]

You’ve probably seen the headlines already – in the early hours of this morning Britain’s Rebecca Adlington won the 400m freestyle, making her the first women’s swimming medallist since 1984 and the first women’s gold si[…]

Thanks to the miracle of the BBC streaming video I have now seen some live weightlifting – the mens’ 62kg finals. I can report that I was – as someone in the comments mentioned – quite wrong about the lack of tactics: but the […]

I saw a minute of the Basketball game between the USA and China today. Gosh Basketball is dull. Look at all the things I thought about in that minute to try to avoid engaging with the game
a) Is giganticism a kind of disability (door frames too low e[…]

I hate the Olympics. But it is everywhere (except for the fencing), so it is very easy to accidentally stumble across it. In the last Olympics I managed a personal best of racking up less than an hour of viewing, but I hope to beat it this time. Howe[…]

Unlike, say, sailing, fencing is a naturally telegenic sport. Violent and shrouded in darkness with dramatically spot-lit little runways for the fencers to jab at each other, each point of a bout will take up at most a few seconds of one’s prec[…]

“No score at the break – the mighty Brazil being held by Belgium.” We have the old problem here of commentators having stereotyped ideas fixed in their small brains before they have seen a team play. The best attempts and chances in[…]

Isn’t the Olympic opening ceremony tomorrow? You know, 08/08/08 = money, money, money? (Actually the games start at 8.08pm, which suggests that the first track should be a cover of the Abba tune by 808 State). What I understand the term “[…]