What an Olympics it's been for these isles, eh? Expectations were good to begin with but the performances have been outstanding- full of fire, fight, grit, determination, innovation, improvisation and excellence in equal measure. And the athletes have been good as well.
Various British competitors who were utterly unknown a fortnight ago have done great things to shake off the perenially irritating 'plucky' prefix to the word 'Brit' but, while all American athletes seem to be whoopin', hollerin' winning machines and all Australian entrants are lank-haired, smug and about as likable as ebola soup-, the Brtish victors have refreshingly been a veritable schmorgasboard (or, to keep this whole piece British themed, a 'buffet') of personalities and demeanours. At one end of the scale there's been Rebecca Adlington, the only person to be described as 'bubbly' without being a tosser and who may be a double Olympic swimming gold medallist but recently claimed to be scared of the sea because she "doesn't do fish". At the opposite end there's Rebecca Romero who quit rowing because it was too soft and switched to cycling- all the while going about her business with the sort of steely-eyed determination that either marks out a great sportsman or a gifted serial killer. She looks like she even goes to the shops for a pint of milk with all the relentless drive of T-1000.
But while these sporting folk have been going about their business and giving some pride back to our sporting nation (admit it, even if you think they're just competing in a bunch of obscure sports a glance at an Olympics medal table that has us ahead of Australia is enough to turn anyone into Richard Littlejohn) the real stars of the show for me have been the BBC and their army of presenters and commentators.
I admit that I was so caught up in all the sport it took me a while before I started paying attention to the people talking all over it. But then I stayed up into the wee small hours of Sunday morning to watch the women's marathon and, while Paula Radcliffe was proving that it's actually pretty tricky to win a 26 mile running race on one leg, I found myself absorbed in Steve Cram and Brendan Foster's equally gutsy performance in the commentary booth.
This, essentially, was the problem they found themselves with. In a marathon not a lot happens for long periods and soon the anecodtes about the athletes various histories and chances dry up. Luckily, these events tend to take place in major cities and so the announcers can instead deal with the dearth in action by acting as tour guide- dispensing little nuggets of information and history regarding wherever the athletes tend to be pounding through at that particular time. Just watch the London marathon one year and you'll end up knowing more about our capital than the average cabbie.
But the Olympic marathon this year provided more than a few problems in this respect as the route twice took lengthy passages through Tianaenmen Square. There you go, you've figured out what the problem was haven't you? If you haven't, here's my approximation of what would have happened had Foster and Cram fallen off the commentary tightrope upon which they found themselves.
Steve Cram: "Paula Radcliffe, not looking too bad but we all know she's had her injury problems this year and, of course we all remember what happend in Athens four years ago".
Brendan Foster: "Indeed we do Steve and let's hope we don't see that again this time".
(Pause)
Cram: "Good news for the athletes that the expected smog hasn't appeared this morning, that's great for these competitors."
Foster: "It really is Steve, and it's not as humid as I think we were expecting it to be either so that's also encouraging for this race"
Cram: "They're still not setting a fast pace though, Brendan, it's very cagey so far so I think the athletes are still playing it safe- no-one looks willing to attack as we near the 10 kilometre mark, the runners now heading into Tianenmen square.
Foster: "And of course this is one of the most famous landmarks in Beijing, an absolutely huge space surrounded by a number of very famous buildings- there's the Mao Zedong's mausoleum as well as the imposing Great Hall of the People and the Monument to the People's Heroes in the centre which was completed in 1958".
(Pause)
Cram: "And of course it's here where all those students got shot isn't it?"
Now I defy anyone to have found themselves in the same position as Cram and Foster and not have uttered something similar to that last line. I know I would. I'd also have mentioned how much of the athletes clothing had been made in Chinese sweatshops by children. And how when the Chinese invented football they centuries ago they used servant's heads as the ball. In fact, with the slow pace of the race I'd have had well over two and a half hours of broadcast time to fill so by the time the leader was entering the stadium at the end of the race I'd probably had got on to talking about getting salmonella from a dodgy Chinese chippy in Edinburgh a few years ago.
Becuase when we talk about other nations the bad stuff comes first- check out what I said about the Americans and the Aussies earlier on. But when there's an Olympics on, with it's creed of friendly, unifying competition, that's not really good form and it is within this constraint that the BBC have excelled so much these last couple of weeks. They've had to talk about how well organised the Beijing games have been without implying, as I think we all suspect, that all the helpful and efficient staff and volunteers are all facing lifetime imprisonment if they so much as fail to rake the sand properly on the beach volleyball court. You could tell they were jumpy because Usian Bolt's staggering run in the 100m final was never compared to the only other performance in the event that could match it for notability- Jesse Owens in 1936- for fear of drawing comparisons between two black men runing extrememly fast in front of oppressive regimes. Instead, they constantly compared it to Ben Johnson's mad-eyed and wholly drug-assisted dash in 1988 thereby draping suspicion-by-association all over proceedings, much better to cast a feint slur on the athlete than the nice hosts. It's a good job there's no great Tibetan sprinters or they'd really have been buggered for something to say.
The Beeb have decided to get round this problem, and the issues of having approximately a billion sports to cover, by getting in ex-competitors to act as commentators so they'll only bang on about the sports in question rather than dallying in context. Now obviously this sort of thing happens in football all the time but there's little opportunity for ex-rowers/cyclists/runners/swimmers etc to be given a mic and told to explain what's going on so their performances have been breathtaking in their unpredictability but overall notable for their competence and ability to educate an audience that's more than likely up very late at night and utterly baffled by whatever event is on the screen.
Things got a bit desperate today though when, on a quiet day for British medals, the BBC decided to take one of their ex-sporting commentators out of the safety of the booth and unleash them on the Chinese nation in person. This took the form of a swimmer by the name of Steve Parry taking a cutout of gold medal hogging swimmer Michael Phelps into Tinaenmen Square for reasons escaping anyone's understanding. He was soon mobbed by a sizable bunch and immediately came to the conclusion that they'd all decided that he was Phelps and he'd taken the bizarre decision to walk around the middle of Beijing with a cardboard cutout of himself. And change his face so he doesn't look anything like Michael Phelps. And speak in a Scouse accent. This extraordinary leap of logic is, in hindsight, probably preferable to admitting to yourself that you're losing the battle for attention to a big piece of cardboard.
Parry decided after that to try to explain to the assembled crowd that he wasn't Phelps by using the tried and trusted British method of speaking in English but louder and more slowly. Unfortunately this meant that he was now speaking to the crowd in a language they seemes to not understand, apart from two words 'Michael Phelps'. Therefore, to the Chinese locals he now seemed like a man who'd decided to walk around with a cardboard cutout of the most famous sportsman currently on the planet then wait till he's surrounded by a crowd and then say tell them who it was before repeatedly saying the name, increasingly becoming louder and slower. If he'd tried that at the Edinburgh Fringe this month, he's have probably won the Perrier Award. In the end, this bizarre cultural exchange ended in a stalemate as Parry decided he'd never convince the Chinese he wasn't Michael Phelps and the Chinese decided to ignore the crazy white man and just take their photos of the cut-out instead.
Still, at least he didn't ask one of the crowd if where he was stood was where all those students were shot.
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