T’Olympics

So now all our cricketing bile has been expended we can turn our attention to Beijing and the quadrennial festival of Sports You Never Gave a Toss About Before and are Unlikely To Do So Again before 2012.

Now we’ve always been more of Winter Olympics enthusiasts ourselves, loving the snowboarding, gritting our teeth through the skiing and even extending our bi-curiousity to the curling on occasion, but we have to admit Beijing’s been a bit of a belter.

Now we’re quite traditional in our views and don’t normally experiment with spurt outside of the approved holy trinity of cricket, footy and F1, but perhaps we’re mellowing with age (or perhaps getting more feeble minded) because we find ourselves engaged by the many and varied delights of swimming (wtf?), weightlifting canoeing - Jesus we even sat through some showjumping the other night.

Nor has Beijing been without the requisite controversies: state run athletic programmes breeding success (as if that was anything new); accusations of Chinese judges being ‘homers’ (again quelle surprise) and a palpable lack of drugs cheats (though there’s still plenty of cycling to come, so all is not lost).

Perhaps worst of all to western eye is that poor Chinese diving lass who’s not been allowed any dinner for years.

Great stuff: Further, higher faster?

We could definitely help with the ‘higher’ part.

More Olympics coverage soon.