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Whether or not you go to the Olympics...
Jul. 31st, 2012 10:12 pm...sooner or later the Olympics will come to you.
I am as not interested in the Olympics as it is possible to be, I would have said; pretty much opposed to the expense and disruption of bringing the games to London, but once that was a fait accompli, well, London's a long way away and we don't need to go there this summer.
As the games progress, though, I grow more and more annoyed about the news coverage, thinking not "this is tedious; will it never end?" but "surely this is not the Olympic spirit?" It's not the taking part that matters, it seems, it's the winning - and that doesn't mean celebrating the extraordinary achievements of whoever comes first in their particular contest, it means Britain getting lots of medals. I hope the enthusiasts who are watching on the dozens of dedicated channels are being given more informed, less partisan coverage, but those of us who wonder from time to time what is going on in the world are being treated to lengthy interviews with disappointed cyclists and divers*. When the spotlight does turn to the foreigner who won with an extraordinary performance, we immediately start to talk about doping (even when all there is to say is that it isn't a likely explanation).
Yesterday's news broadcast also brought the unattractive sight of a representative of the sports federations (I have no real idea what this means) explaining why seats allocated to his organisation were being left unoccupied: it was the earky stages of the games, he said, these were low-level heats and so early in the morning, too: you couldn't expect his members to want to watch those. They'd be there for the finals.
A surprising number of people on my f-list seem to have watched the opening ceremony. I saw some of it myself:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler watched from start to finish, but by the time D. and I joined him the industrial revolution was in full swing. Like everyone else, I loved the tribute to the NHS, and enjoyed the game of Name That Tune, but the parade of athletes went on well past my bed-time, and I bailed somewhere in the Cs. So I probably didn't see half of it**. And I wasn't moved or enthralled by it, the way other people say they were. What I liked about it was precisely that it was so blatantly one man's view, without the blandness of all the corporate ballyhoo: Danny Boyle had been given a blank cheque, and he was having fun spending it. If he decided that one of the great things about being British was Tim Berners-Lee, then he could invite Tim Berners-Lee along, even if he then couldn't think of anything better to do with him than point and say: "Look! Tim Berners-Lee!"
The Wine Society's newsletter has a jokey column of 'Olympic myths' (loosely linked to their Hatzidakis Santorini, which we had been drinking in preparation for the ceremony). I liked the story, attributed to David C. Young, that modern Olympic officials have assumed that ancient athletes abstained from strong drink, setting an example for today's competitors, on the basis of an ancient inscription from Delphi that had been translated 'Wine cannot be taken into the stadium'. It now seems the correct translation is 'Wine cannot be taken out of the stadium.' Looking for more details, I found this article written at the time of the 2004 games, from which the entire feature seems to have been taken.
*I am quite cheered at the way the press are being wrong-footed by bronze medals being won while they busy watching the failure of those whose success they expected, no, counted on - though failure is a harsh term for coming, say, fifth in this level of competition.
**The ceremony was not only very long, it also started quite late***. I assume this is about showing it live in as many countries as possible.
***Also in the sense that actually the games had already started. But mostly outside London, so it didn't count. (I was quite indignant on behalf of the women's football.)
I am as not interested in the Olympics as it is possible to be, I would have said; pretty much opposed to the expense and disruption of bringing the games to London, but once that was a fait accompli, well, London's a long way away and we don't need to go there this summer.
As the games progress, though, I grow more and more annoyed about the news coverage, thinking not "this is tedious; will it never end?" but "surely this is not the Olympic spirit?" It's not the taking part that matters, it seems, it's the winning - and that doesn't mean celebrating the extraordinary achievements of whoever comes first in their particular contest, it means Britain getting lots of medals. I hope the enthusiasts who are watching on the dozens of dedicated channels are being given more informed, less partisan coverage, but those of us who wonder from time to time what is going on in the world are being treated to lengthy interviews with disappointed cyclists and divers*. When the spotlight does turn to the foreigner who won with an extraordinary performance, we immediately start to talk about doping (even when all there is to say is that it isn't a likely explanation).
Yesterday's news broadcast also brought the unattractive sight of a representative of the sports federations (I have no real idea what this means) explaining why seats allocated to his organisation were being left unoccupied: it was the earky stages of the games, he said, these were low-level heats and so early in the morning, too: you couldn't expect his members to want to watch those. They'd be there for the finals.
A surprising number of people on my f-list seem to have watched the opening ceremony. I saw some of it myself:
durham_rambler watched from start to finish, but by the time D. and I joined him the industrial revolution was in full swing. Like everyone else, I loved the tribute to the NHS, and enjoyed the game of Name That Tune, but the parade of athletes went on well past my bed-time, and I bailed somewhere in the Cs. So I probably didn't see half of it**. And I wasn't moved or enthralled by it, the way other people say they were. What I liked about it was precisely that it was so blatantly one man's view, without the blandness of all the corporate ballyhoo: Danny Boyle had been given a blank cheque, and he was having fun spending it. If he decided that one of the great things about being British was Tim Berners-Lee, then he could invite Tim Berners-Lee along, even if he then couldn't think of anything better to do with him than point and say: "Look! Tim Berners-Lee!"The Wine Society's newsletter has a jokey column of 'Olympic myths' (loosely linked to their Hatzidakis Santorini, which we had been drinking in preparation for the ceremony). I liked the story, attributed to David C. Young, that modern Olympic officials have assumed that ancient athletes abstained from strong drink, setting an example for today's competitors, on the basis of an ancient inscription from Delphi that had been translated 'Wine cannot be taken into the stadium'. It now seems the correct translation is 'Wine cannot be taken out of the stadium.' Looking for more details, I found this article written at the time of the 2004 games, from which the entire feature seems to have been taken.
*I am quite cheered at the way the press are being wrong-footed by bronze medals being won while they busy watching the failure of those whose success they expected, no, counted on - though failure is a harsh term for coming, say, fifth in this level of competition.
**The ceremony was not only very long, it also started quite late***. I assume this is about showing it live in as many countries as possible.
***Also in the sense that actually the games had already started. But mostly outside London, so it didn't count. (I was quite indignant on behalf of the women's football.)
