Why have I not written anything for a while? Well, I’ve been quite busy with work things over the past week or so. Never mind. I’ll be doing some more exciting things over the next three weeks, though, and intend to add updates here…
For now, though, a look at recent news. As the Olympics gradually draws to a close, I think the British team have a right to feel quite proud. There were some disappointing results and gallant near-misses, but we’ve also seen a few pleasant surprises, so our medal tally isn’t half bad (and Amir Khan is in one of the boxing finals tomorrow, so it could get even better). The Paula Radcliffe drama gave the press plenty of ammunition for all the “plucky British losers” stories, but that has thankfully been eclipsed by Kelly Holmes’ double success.
There’s an important lesson to be learned here. We don’t have the population of the USA, China or Russia. A large proportion of our sport consumption is dedicated to professional football and two non-Olympic team sports, rugby and cricket. Therefore, we have to grab whatever medals we can, nurturing the talent regardless of the sport. Seb Coe and Steve Ovett dominated middle-distance running in the early 80s, but that doesn’t mean we always will do. Ditto Jonathan Edwards and the triple jump or Sally Gunnell and the 400m hurdles. Talent comes and goes, flitting from sport to sport, and we shouldn’t pin our hopes on what we consider our “core” events.
Speaking of Athens, one of last week’s most amusing news stories involved the Official Hyperlink Policy of the Olympics 2004 website. A policy so staggeringly stupid and petty, I’ve already disobeyed it twice in this post. Ha!
And on the subject of website stupidity, the Transport for London site is one of the most clumsy, confusing, counter-intuitive piles of badly organised information I’ve ever seen. If you try to use the site without a reasonable knowledge of London geography, God help you. I’m pretty familiar with the lie of the land round these parts, but was driven to… well, write this.