B*llocks to Beijing

25 August 2008.

So the Olympics are over and Team GB is heralding success unseen for a century. This will no doubt result in countless MBEs and knighthoods come the next time the farcical investitures are handed out. According to Sunday’s 2012 party Jason Gardener is an MBE, presumably solely for being part of the 4x100m relay that won gold in Athens because the Americans cocked up and as a minimum one-quarter of its constituents were on a cocktail of substances even Amy Winehouse would wince at.

Mansfield’s seen its biggest street party since the Queen’s Silver Jubilee 31 years ago to celebrate a Concorde-nosed woman winning a couple of gold medals for doing a couple of lengths. Hardly heroic when emergency services personnel probably go through this each time some idiot decides a spot of nightime drunken seaside skinny-dipping must be a good idea. As for naming a pub after the 19 year old, I think the Nose & Crown would have been better than the Adlington Arms.

Forgive my traditionalism but aren’t the Olympics supposed to be a medium for the most outstanding athletes in their particular discipline to prove their superiority over their fellow man all else being equal? Team GB’s 19 golds mostly came with the aid of a couple of wheels, or a sophisticated boat.

Let’s be real, the majority of the 204 countries competing at the 2008 games can’t afford this equipment. As for those shouting James DeGale or Rebecca Adlington, how many nations can even afford to produce boxing gloves and aerodynamic swimming costumes at their sweat shops? Some of them haven’t even got water, let alone a swimming pool. Ben Ainslie’s Finn probably accounts for the GDP of the Netherlands Antilles. For that matter, how many of even the UK population have even seen a Yngling?

As Goldie Sayers’ javelin represents the only British athlete seen on the Bird’s Nest’s field out of the 24 disciplines on offer, all else being equal the Brits are quite frankly useless. Brush aside Christine Ohuruogu’s achievements - and let’s be honest no-one can be sure she’s drug-free - GB has got nothing to be proud of.

Philips Idowu’s been number one in the world for months thanks to injuries to Christian Olsson but he can only manage silver. Germaine Mason is only British because he changed citizenship from his native Jamaica two years ago. Kelly Sotherton goes in as huge favourite for gold because Carolina Kluft is so far better than the rest she decided to focus on the long jump instead and ends up outside the medals even after the disqualification of the latest drug cheat (who by the way didn’t really need a drugs test – all the organisers had to do was look at Blonska and you could see she had more drugs in her than a Michael Barrymore pool boy). The 4x100 men produced a worse handover than the allied forces in Iraq. And Paula Radcliffe breaks down again like a second-hand fridge-freezer.

All the usual excuses materialise, which Michael Johnson rightly noted are diseases only miraculously incapacitating the Brits come the big occasion. They're about as believable as Steve McLaren's two-week old Dutch accent. I can picture in the not-too-distant future a hopeless boxer with one too many blows to the head stating at his post-fight defeat "I think I must have picked up one of those computer viruses".

My favourite excuse which appears time and again from the commentators is in middle- and long-distance events where the Brit is described as “staying out of trouble” at the back of the pack allegedly waiting for their moment to strike. The fact is they’re at the back because they’re useless. You don’t see Kenenisa Bekele sitting at the back, he’s too busy staying out of trouble – at the front.

Beyond the athletics, Frankie Gavin couldn’t even make the designated weight to box. If 4 years is too short a timescale to lose a stone or two, what hope have those attending Weight Watchers meetings every week got? Shanaze Reade, who apparently had never lost, crashed out 3 times before finishing nowhere in the BMX. Fair play Aaron Cooke was a victim of poor umpiring, but a USA athlete would never have put themselves in the position of losing as a result of poor judgment.

These are the few events a Brit managed to qualify for. Where were Brits in the table tennis, synchronised swimming and handball? Meanwhile, surely we should have enthusiasts queuing up for the fencing and shooting events if the UK’s record on gun and knife crime is anything to go by. As any management theorist would tell you a good leader would turn that achilles heel into an opportunity. If you want proof look at the Africans who dominate distance running - most of them are so far away from their next meal they have to run 10,000 metres every day to survive.

Fair enough those on the other side of the pond covered themselves in glory on the track - perhaps the special relationship means when one screws up a relay so must the other - with both 4x100 squads dropping the baton, the sprinters outshone by the Jamaicans across the board and Lolo Jones tripping over the penultimate hurdle like a member of the Parachute regiment tripping over an Iraqi landmine when running away with the 110 hurdles.

But you know they’ll be back. Frankly, it’s hard to see how Britain is going to improve. Maybe China does have a poor record on human rights but if regular beatings to instil a little discipline in athletes gets them a gold medal four years later so be it. The coach shouldn’t have to be thrown in Wormwood Scrubs for life for it in this overregulated society, while the athlete lets loose at the Olympic village sex-fest and finishes last. Bring back the cane and legalise smacking and you'll see the difference in British sport performance.

Meanwhile, all those with power claim Britain doesn’t have the finances to do what China’s just done i.e. top the medal table, have representatives competing in virtually every Olympic event, produce incredible stadia and infrastructure. I could be wrong but what happened to the UK being an economic superpower? Last time I looked, the UK was more developed than China. Have the over-greedy banks and energy companies screwed us over so badly we can’t build some sporting facilities?

The Chinese are giving over £20,000 for each gold medal won by their athletes in Beijing. We should do the same and delay lottery funding until someone wins something. The idea should then defuse to those providing the finance to our Premier League nancy boys too. That might get rid of the itch in that part of your back you just can’t reach that is football agents.

It’s not that Britain is poor in any case, simply that those somehow elected to plan all these things haven’t got a clue. And if they do, they probably left the plans on a train somewhere. Look at the plans for the 2012 Olympic stadium: Only the UK could rip out three-quarters of the seats and turn what should be an iconic stadium into a third division football club home after 2 weeks of use. So much for leaving a legacy, the premise the London bid was based on. I didn’t know increasing Leyton Orient’s capacity to 25,000 was so high up the governmental agenda for a better Britain.

One way of increasing GB participation posited is to form a GB football team - or the cheapskate’s way of increasing participation as it should be known. No need to spend anything on facilities and so on there. What a flawed idea anyway as the same 11 players representing Great Britain would all hail from England's council estates.

The fact that all overpaid fairies under the age of 23 compete at the Olympics is a ridiculous notion in any case. Who needs a special Graham Norton-fronted Saturday evening show when a competition to find the biggest nancy was ensuing right in front of us in Beijing. With the tennis players the idiocy stems to any age – especially when some of these, e.g. Andy Roddick, choose not to attend or in the case of the sole Brit Andy Murray barely even try and get knocked out by an unknown.

And as for the other Government-run waste of taxpayer money, the BBC, how are Brits supposed to become enthused in the sports where we have no athletes competing if we can’t even watch them. I have no clue about the rules governing softball and it could be as exciting as a nose-flute concert for all I know but if I saw some to learn hold the front page I may want to play.

24-hour coverage? Half of it was spent discussing the commentators’ personal highlights or showing pre-recorded interviews with Olympians. Hardly any of the content outside the athletics and the gold medal matches was even live on BBC1. The Usain Bolt interview with Phil Jones after his triple gold exploits was shown three times in two days. Surely relegate that to BBC3 or BBC4, which had no coverage. In fact, gymnastics and perhaps, following Tom Daley’s involvement, the diving could be shown on CBeebies. Given the UK’s record on teenage pregnancy, however, more likely we’ll be seeing Daley on City Hospital in a few months for a post-Caesarean section interview on the birth of his first child.

Any road, the fact is surely there was unlimited space on BBCi to show about 47 streams – live coverage of every sport taking place at any one time – let alone on their normal channels which no-one watches the rest of the time. If they’re concerned about wasting taxpayers money for once on less cost-effective sports, I’ll do the commentary in return for a free flight to a country not even the Prime Minister could get into a few decades ago. It’s surely cheaper than some of the Canadians and others subcontracted in for minor sports such as the synchronised swimming.

Besides the money would be best spent continuing the theme of bribing the IOC exercised by other nations (as exposed by the BBC’s Panorama) so that we can get sports into the games that we’re actually good at, and where we’re not going to see empty seats. Surely the Brits would excel at the following, and they would certainly make great television:

1. The chase the cake race. Separate weight classes needed for over-15st, over-20st, over-25st and so on. It would function in much the way greyhounds chase the dead rabbit round Walthamstow’s finest, although the winner gets a bonus price if an Olympic gold medal is insufficient.

2. The armoured tank fighting. There would be no recourse for the judges to distinguish the winner there, although the silver and bronze medallists would only receive their awards in hospital or posthumously.

3. The pint-downing. Spectators can join in on this one so everyone’s a winner plus I’m sure it’d leave a legacy albeit similar to that left to city centres on most Saturday nights.

4. White van racing.

And, if there’s a shortage of managers for our newly established participation, there’s about 20 million armchair versions down the pub or sat at home in front of the telly watching the footy every weekend who reckon they could do a better job.

Forecast for 2012? Firstly, the minimal investment in “improvements” to transport - apparently putting more boats on the Thames which I would’ve thought would interfere with our heroic rowers training is improving transport links - will mean only those who can already get to the London Olympic sites easily aka Londoners will be able to get there. Those outside with no option but to use the car hopelessly trying to get to London will also increase carbon emissions, leaving a legacy of a different kind. And for our foreign friends coming to watch their heroes they'll be subjected to welcome to Britain stabbings.

Those that do make it won't get in anywhere as the stadia will not be finished. It won't make a difference though as the games will be a complete washout with the powers that be once more ignoring the desperate need for a retractable roof on everything. Unsurprisingly, then, there'll be empty seats galore. Half those that are filled will be vandalised by groups of 13 year olds after drinking half a bottle of White Stripe in Hyde Park. The remainder will simply be bombed due to contraband getting through security in a processional fashion as fraud and security breaches abound. And that's despite the costs to the taxpayer doubling the stated £9.4bn. Those that do get to see some Olympic action will be treated to another serving of poor GB performance mainly because school and club sports facilities will have had no investment.

Oh well, nothing can live up to my Beijing highlights, namely the 4 horses testing positive for banned substances and Jackie Chan giving the microphone his all at the closing ceremony.