But Is It Sport?

Britain's suggested new sport for London 2012 is considered by Olympic officials - "The 100m for people who just haven't got the hang of sex".


I watched the Olympics today. Now, call me Mr Cynically Inclined Damp Squib if you like but I just can't seem to get as excited about it all as everyone else is doing in this country.

We won a medal today. I forget the colour - I was too busy throwing things at the telly. The "sport"?...........BMX racing!! Fuck me sideways!!!!! What next? "International Hanging Round The Chip Shop and Drinking Thunderbird"? "The 4x100m Being Sick Outside a Nightclub and Showing Your Pants"?

I know the whole nation is busy singing the praises of our brave athletes as they notch up record amounts of medals but let's get things in perspective a little, shall we? As far as real sport is concerned - i.e. swimming and track and field - we have had that young lass from Mansfield winning double gold in the pool. She has done brilliantly and is the one true ray of sunshine. Well done her!!! Sadly, every other event in the swimming was completely overshadowed by the Americans entering a swordfish in pair of trunks who won everything else. When you're up against a bloke who could overtake a cross-Channel ferry in a straight race you ain't got much of a chance!

On the track, however, we have won just one medal so far. That was done by a woman who "forgot" to take a drugs test three times and was banned for life from competition before she successfully appealed. I'm saying nothing more. All our other competitors have stood true to the British Olympic motto of "It's not the winning that's important, it's the coming seventh".

It is, apparently, the right of every games to introduce new sports. As Beijing is hosting it this time around, I thought we could have looked forward to "tank stopping", "mass 'disappearing'" or "dissident torturing". No such luck. Instead, what have we had? Well, this morning, "Team GB" secured a bronze in......wait for it.......windsurfing!!!! Holy Christ!!!!!!!!

Elsewhere, our other triumphs have been in:

1. Sailing. They have managed to divide this alleged sport up not only into the two, acceptable categories, namely "sailing over different distances" and "sailing in different kinds of boats", but also into "sailing with lots of people on board", "Nobby No-Mates sailing", "sailing round little markers", "sailing in a straight line", "zi-zaggy sailing", "sailing when people are watching", "sailing in the dark", and "sailing off to South America while leaving your clothes on the beach and then getting your wife to claim the life insurance (freestyle)" etc, etc. It's ridiculous. I mean, there are surely only so many ways you can divide up a discipline. At this rate, we'll have the "100m with someone on your back", "the 100m on one leg", "the 100m in fancy dress", "the 100m backwards", "the 100m for people who can only run 80m" and so on, and so on, and so on. The sailors all fall into one overall category, however, namely the "sailing when you can't tell who's doing what or going where" category. Whichever event was being screened, the image was always the same - a pond filled with about 3,000 boats, all going in different directions like a sort of Battle of Trafalgar For People With No Sense of Direction. Over this incomprehensible melee the comentators would say things like "And there is Trevor, in seventh, trying desperately to out-tack the plucky American". What?????? Fuck off!!

2. Indoor cycling. This is another example of where loads of meaningless categories have been created when basically they should just try to find out who can go fastest and longest. I was, at first, attracted to the idea of indoor cycling. I thought it offered new possibilities, like "indoor pole-vaulting" and "lounge javelin throwing" would do. It turned out to be not that exciting. No-one had to negotiate a settee or armchairs, no-one got penalised for bumping into the cooker and there was no "King of the Stairs". It was just hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of people riding round, and round, and round, and round, sometimes being chased by others, sometimes following a bloke on a moped, sometimes crawling along and then, inexplicably, going very, very fast, sometimes riding at the top of the track, sometimes trundling along at the bottom of the track, eyeing everyone else up suspiciously. Not really my idea of fun.

3. Crying. We have excelled in this. We are strongest on the podium when the national anthem is played but Paula Radcliffe, fresh from her gold medal triumph in the World Incontinence Championship, blew away the competition just as she limped over the line in the marathon in that cherished position - 23rd.

All right, there was the rowing, which I do class as a sport, and I'm sure Britain has succeeded in other areas but they must be SO obscure that they have yet to be covered by the BBC (the outfit, by the way, which has sent MORE staff to Beijing than the nation has sent athletes!!)

Well, in four years time we've got the chance to really show the rest of the world how crap we are. Not only will we have the chance to win the medals no-one else wants, we will be staging the bloody thing and so there will be a host of additional attractions, like "the 100m-straight-up for tilers finishing off the roof" and the "speed concreting ahead of the marathon runners".

Maybe by 2012 we'll introduce as one our new sports "sitting on the settee and moaning a lot"? I might enter.

Nothing for Grantham.