Olympics Aftermath: The baton passes….

And so to Monday where we wake with a sense of sadness to find an Olympic size hole in our heart at the conclusion of Beijing 2008.

It’s been a fantastic games like they all are or at least they are all remembered, but for a change we’ll carry away fond memories of ‘spectacular British sporting success’ – and how often do we get to arrange words in that particular order in a sentence?

Nicole Cooke, Chris Hoy, Rebecca Addlington, those three Blondes in a boat and James De Gale, we salute you and lest we forget we must also pay tribute to all those other plucky Brit also-rans who restored a sense of proportion into our Gold-addled sporting brains.

Michael Phelps, Ussain Bolt, the 51 Chinese gold medallists too numerous to mention and weird, unusual and newly discovered gems like the Keirin and Taekwondo, we’re going to miss you all as we return to the now seemingly mundane delights of footy, cricket and F1.

As to the Olympics themselves, well they have been very Chinese in character. It’d probably be totally tasteless to make comparisons with Berlin 1936, but you know us, we go where other blogs fear to tread and while not quite in the same realm as the Games of the XI Olympiad, they've been a bit too adjascent at times for comfort it’s been difficult to escape the sense of state sponsored happiness and understated Chinese triumphalism.

It’d probably be going over the top to call it fully fledged sporting propaganda, but there’s no doubt China wanted to use these games to confirm itself as a major power reborn in the modern world – and possibly it’s churlish to blame them for using the opportunity to do just that. Besides engaging this closely with the wider world may just loosen them up a little and for that, we may all eventually have cause to be thankful.

So with the spectacular closing ceremony now fading into a rash of multi-coloured pixels the BBC’s i-player we have to ask, what will London 2012 do differently?

Well a different emphasis no doubt. There’s no way churlish Brits will lash out 20 billion quid on the games for a start, nor would you coral any right-thinking members of our populace into training up for four years as a bouncing pixel, no matter how spectacular it might look in the opening ceremony.

Nope, we’re aiming for the same impact but naturally on the cheap and we’ll probably do best to concentrate on our traditional strengths, areas where Team GB and GB itself does actually does rule the waves.

Erm, music’s about all we could come up with, so expect a reformed Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the winner of the X-Factor 2011 all to have a big part to play.

Yet already our team of elite binge drinkers are training extra hard on the double vodkas this bank holiday Monday, the gaffe that will sink the games is just a mere twinkle in Boris’ eye (he’ll probably let the torch go out or something – cripes!) and the queen has put an enormous kettle on as she waits to welcome the world for a nice cup of tea.

London 2012, you can’t come soon enough.

Home advantage

OMG it's double post Friday!

Sneaking a spot of Olympics-watch into our lunchtime, we witness for the first time the delights of Taekwondo or ‘freelance kicking people in ze head’ as it should more properly be known.

A good showing by 17-year-old Brit Aaron Cook is tragically cut short by what can only be described as some highly dubious judging in the bronze medal boot off where the judges should’ve reported for duty at Specsavers rather than for an Olympic play off final.

While we would concede we’re no experts, even we could tell he’d stuck one on the Chinese guy’s bonce in the first round and that should have earned him two points rather than a charge of assault and battery.

Later rounds were no better and the judges were more homer than The Illiad. Young Aaron agreed opining: “I have never seen scoring like it in my life. In any other match I would have won by about five points but the judges were not putting anything up. I knew the crowd would be behind him but I didn't think the scoring would be that bad.”

Gutting for young Aaron no doubt, but don’t worry lad, home advantage should count for something next time. Problem is we’ll probably be too honest to take advantage. It’s a heavy burden to bear.

Retreat Australia fair...

So it’s a historic games for Team GB and the biggest medal tally since that ancient Olympic games when the Greeks mistakenly allowed competitive drinking, high street fighting and chariot rage into the games and perfidious Albion swept the board.

Still there’s been some talk doing the rounds about how it’s all slightly devalued because GB has dominated in the cycling, sailing and swimming and not the ‘prestige’ athletic events.

Frankly, what a pile of crap. Gold is gold. You look at your talent, target what you’re good at, develop your potental and put your resources where you'll win. Simple as.

Most hilarious has been some classic sniping and snidery from the Aussies, who, five golds off the pace on Wonderful Wednesday, have claimed Britain is only good at ‘sitting down sports’

And the call us the ‘Whingeing Poms?’

Even funnier was Aussie Olympics committee’s John Coates who said GB hadn’t done bad in the swimming ‘for a nation with no pools and not much soap.’

There’s nothing bitter and twisted as an Aussie in second or third place or what is it now? Oh actually fifth place with eight of their eleven golds being won by the Sheilas.

Tell you what Bruce, how’s about we introduce sheep shearing, bestiality and freestyle sister chasing for 2012?

Few guaranteed golds for the Aussies in that trio.

The Olympics: Undiscovered Gems - Keirin

It's World of Spurt live at the Olympics, well live in front of the telly at the Olympics anyway.

That curse of the wasted classes, work, has kept us from fully enjoying the Olympics from the correct perspective this week ie. loafing on a sofa for 12 hours at a time with only a crate of beer for company.

But with Mrs Spurt off on her travels again, we're free to laze around on Saturday and enjoy a bumper quota of Olympic sport.

It's been dubbed Golden Saturday in the UK, ie, the first weekend when we might cop a few, but amid some early rowing and swimming glory, we discover a splendid new offering in the velodrom in the form of Keirin

Now there's been a bit of muttering and snidery about the inclusion of Keiron, which was apparently mysteriously slotted in at the last minute to appease the lucrative betting markets, but seriously, what's not to like?

For those of you yet to experience its delights, Keirin involves a pack of cyclists racing to the line on an indoor track. Nothing new there then, but the twist? Well for the first few laps they follow around a bloke on a moped who gradually increases the pace until he zips off a couple of laps towards the end. From then on in its a straight sprint to the line,

Doesn't sound outstanding but its enthralling to watch, Keirin means 'fight' for starters even though they've apparently toned it down for the Olympics by removing the headbutting. A heady mix of strategy for the first few laps and then brute power and aggression for the last, with the occasional chance of crunching multi-bike stack it's our new favourite undiscovered sport.

In our view if they could just move it a shade closer to Rollerball, it would be absolutely perfect. But let's reinstate the headbutting for a start.

Doesn't hurt when Chris Hoy takes Gold and Ross Edgar Silver for Team GB either. Wonder if it's available on a satellite channel anywhere?

A new field of spurting endeavour that really gets your heart pumping and shouting yourself hoarse as you cheer your country over the line, now that is one of the true joys of the Olympics.

The genius of the Olympics Part 1: Womens' Beach Volleyball

Okay so not much time for an update today but if we had any lingering doubts before about the glorious games, now you can colour us convinced.

Three short words: Womens'. Beach. Volleyball.

This is a ‘sport’ in no doubt about its greatest assets, as a random sample of the commentary reveals.

“A great pair.” We were forced to agree.

“They’re in great shape” Again no dissenting voices from this corner.

Any sport which has maximum costume sizes and fit lasses writhing about in the sand for your viewing pleasure has to be applauded.

What’s that you say? A ball? There’s a ball? What ball?

*

And now one in what might possibly be a very short series:

Olympic word of the day: 'Winningest'

As in “Michael Phelps is the Winningest Athlete in Olympic history.”

Jesus you give these people a language and see what they do with it. Dictionary for American Network NBC someone….

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.

Dear ol’ Blighty

And 3-2-1 we’re back! Just like that. Did you miss us? Well didja? Yup if a week’s is a long time in politics it’s an eternity in the spurting world and our two week sojourn in France, while much needed, left us positively salivating for some decent spurt to get our teeth into.

En France the only competitive spurting action we managed was watching the searing white heat of the local Boule competition, the savage nobility of Chèvre racing and of course, the dangerous delights of competitive fromage consumption.

But in our absence? So much to cover our head’s almost swimming. Lewis’s puncture, the continuing mad giddy whirl of the transfer merry go around and the advent of the annual quadrennial festival of sports you didn’t know you cared about – or the Olympics as it’s more popularly known.

But it’s the resignation of England skipper Michael Vaughan which has been the big story as far as we’re concerned. It’s a shame, a shock, to see him go when he’s undoubtedly been the best and most successful captain England have had in recent years. Okay he wasn’t scoring runs right now, but he was still the man to lead us against the Aussies next summer, wasn’t he?

And KP as the new skipper? Now that’s a big call. This one will need some careful consideration.

Still we're just warming up, so we'll be back with some more considered thoughts tomorrow.

The Olympic spirit

A slack day in the spurting firmament today, with little other than Man Utd and Barcelona’s triumphant processional strolls into the Champions League semi-finals last night.

Still, with a distinct lack of sporting endeavour (and we don’t count Golf as a real sport so that Master’s nonsense isn’t relevant) it gives us a little window to consider the mixture of drama and farce which has been the Olympic flame’s progress this week.

It’s probably the most naive thing in the world to say that sport and politics never mix, they shouldn’t, but they always have and they always will.

With a Free Tibet at the top of the agenda, the burly Chinese Stormtroopers, secret service aides or torch guards - whatever they really are - have been hounded, pounded, extinguished and even re-routed across London, Paris and San Francisco and back.

Frankly its been a major embarrassment for China but the games were awarded to Beijing at least partly on the understanding that they would help social change and promote ‘moral engagement’ with the awakening dragon. Not much evidence of that in the draconian pronouncements against legitimate protest.

Still if the torch’s troubled procession has proved inspirational: backing the underdog against the favourite, resisting bullying oppression and using sport as a legitimate weapon against injustice are all activities very much in keeping with the Olympic spirit.