So here, in order to keep my own personal Olympic flame burning for just a little bit longer, are my favourite thoughts and memories of what has been, in my opinion, an enthralling and captivating competition.
1) Football (the male variety) took a back seat in the nation’s consciousness. We ignored it, and sometimes we even mocked it for its injury-fabrication and its badly-behaved, overpaid, spoilt young men. Even those of us who love football (of which I am one) ignored it. And do you know what? It was great. We now know what sporting prowess really is. It is not the Gucci-clad guy with the overloaded bank account who turns up for football training once in a while. It’s the lady hockey player who had her jaw broken but returned to play for her team 1 day after an operation to repair her jaw, by inserting a metal plate in it, with her face bound up in bandages and sutures. Can you even imagine a footballer doing that? Of course you can’t. Kate Walsh, Team GB Hockey Captain, we salute you.
2) The lady carrying and selling beer in the Olympic Park, who, laden with a back-breaking cool bag, nonetheless managed a few dance moves and drummed up an enthusiastic crowd by shouting “Buy some beer and get some dancing feet!”
3) The fact that there was a sizeable section of the nation, including me, which airily imagined itself to be immune to the Olympics. At the end of day 1, I’m pretty sure every single one of us was eating our words, and on the sliding scale of interest levels we had all departed “ambivalent” and were rapidly heading for “obsessed”. How did THAT happen?
4) The lady who, in spite of the fact that it was 11.30pm, she had probably been sitting in her high chair with her loud hailer for a few hours, she was surrounded by drunk and ecstatic Norwegians (I think Norway had done particularly well at Handball on that day) and she almost certainly needed a stiff gin and a bite to eat, managed to make up, on the spur of the moment, a rap which thanked everyone for coming today and directed them gently but firmly towards the exits and the less busy public transport options. You go girl.
5) Usain Bolt. Simple as.
6) The other male sprinters in Usain Bolt’s races who weren’t Usain Bolt but had a go at being him anyway. Epic Fail. Note to you guys: until you can win the 100m running backwards with one hand tied behind your back and the other one waving at the crowd, fuelled by nothing but a diet of McDonalds Chicken Nuggets, and start celebrating your victory at around the 75m mark, you will never achieve his level of cool. Live with it.
7) The remote control minis which beetled up and down the athletics throwing area ferrying the throwees back to the throwers. How much did you want a shot of those? How long do you think they took combing the country to find someone over the age of 12 who could be trusted to operate them competently? If I had actually been given that job, how many times do you imagine the track events might have been disrupted by the sudden inadvertent appearance on the track of a mini carrying a couple of javelins?
8) Clare Balding, who wept copiously every time ANYONE from Team GB won ANY colour of medal. She was permanently surrounded by reams of paper containing all her facts and figures. Could they not have found her a larger table? Or an iPad perhaps?
9) Denise Lewis and Colin Jackson, who made us all feel so much better knowing that it wasn’t just us who jumped up and down and yelled ourselves hoarse at the track athletes (who could hear neither them in their sound-proof TV studio, nor us in front of our TVs at home) to try and make them go faster.
10) Michael Johnson, who wore the long-suffering look of a man who was a) American and therefore exceedingly unlikely to jump up and down like a numpty for the sake of Team GB; b) FAR too cool to jump up and down like a numpty for the sake of any team; and c) only there, amongst these crazy people, because it was down in black and white in the terms and conditions section of his legally binding BBC contract.
11) Jess Ennis. See item 5.
12) Mo Farrah. Ditto. We love a bit of Mo.
13) Beth Tweddle. Ditto. Made doubly pleasurable because of the infinite rhyming possibilities. The whole nation had stolen a march on every possible tabloid headline for the following day. We’d done them all, folks.
14) Heck. ALL our medal winners. Especially those who had got there in spite of having all their funding withdrawn. In effect that’s the same as me doing my job (except without the sweating and bleeding and vomiting of course) but not receiving my salary. Wouldn’t happen, let’s face it.
15) That moment during the Opening Ceremony when the person we all thought was Dame Judi Dench or Helen Mirren dressed up as the Queen turned around to Daniel Craig and said, “Hello Bond…” and 55 million jaws simultaneously hit the ground as we all realised it actually WAS the Queen.
16) Gary Barlow in the Closing Ceremony. You cried, didn’t you. Of all the courage we saw over the 17 days of the competition, surely his was the greatest.
17) The moment during the Closing Ceremony when a chance camera angle visited upon us all the sudden but inescapable realisation, courtesy of Messieurs Cameron and Johnston, that the Conservative Party may be crap at governing, but they are far worse at dancing.
There are a million other memories. How many accidents were caused by people scrolling Twitter obsessively whilst walking across the road I wonder? Roll on the Paralympics, I can’t wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment