A boost to global spirits

Well that is the Olympics over. I nearly said for another four years, but of course it is only three years before the world’s greatest sportswomen and men gather again in Paris. Almost a home games.

So what to make of the 32nd Olympiad – and just as importantly, the television coverage?

Let’s start with the Games themselves. Firstly it is surely a miracle that they ever took place in a world riven with Covid-19. I confess that until a matter of weeks before the opening ceremony I thought it was highly likely they would be cancelled. It truly was a triumph of organisation and risk management for them to go ahead as they did.

Was it irresponsible? I don’t think so. Admittedly it may have increased the vectors of infection slightly for athletes from so many nations to meet in Tokyo and compete together. But on the other side of the ledger, it provided a much-needed boost to global spirits. It was something which brought colour to lives which had been made monochrome by so many coronavirus restrictions, not to mention by nearly five million deaths and many more people falling seriously ill.

I say it has brought a boost to the spirits, but I know that’s not a universal feeling. For a minority, all of this ‘damn sport’ was an unwelcome intrusion into their television watching habits.

I can sympathise because – not being a football fan – I was in the same position during the Euros and will be again during next year’s World Cup.

Each to their own, but personally I go mad for the eclectic range of sports on offer during the summer Olympics, and have no quibble with it dominating the TV listings, in order to enjoy total immersion in this four-yearly festival of fitness. Which is why the BBC’s scaled back, and slightly oddly focused, coverage this year was such a big disappointment.

I know that wasn’t all their fault. Others with deeper pockets had seemingly outbid them for the broadcasting rights, leaving our national broadcaster limited to showing only two sports at any one time. Sad, but a sign of the times.

Talking of over-commercialisation, I thought it was a scandal that top athletes, who had prepared for years, had to contest finals in the very sub-optimal morning sessions just to pander to American TV schedules.

Anyway, back to the BBC’s skeleton coverage. I know you can overcome such a free-to-view famine by paying subscriptions to commercial networks, but for those of us who [in normal times] rarely watch the TV that would be a very wasteful use of the household budget. Anyway, even within their externally-imposed restrictions the BBC’s own editorial choices were very hard to fathom and deeply frustrating.

I fess up that I am a complete athletics nut so it was the patchiness of the coverage of this sport in particular which left me shouting at my TV.

I know it sounds elitist, but I really think that ‘track and field’ is one of the centrepieces of the Olympics.

After all, running, jumping and throwing were core to the ancient Olympics and have been a mainstay of the modern games ever since they were revived in the 19th century. So surely they deserved to be shown pretty much in full – much as I enjoy the myriad of other sports on show.

No such luck. The rot set in on the first day of track and field. Thanks to our time difference with Japan, the first session took place in the early hours BST.

My days of staying up all night are long gone but I rose very early to catch up on ‘Olympic Breakfast’. Not a sniff of the athletics, but lots of fringe sports – in some cases with the same footage

being repeated.

Never mind – the important evening session was due to take place from 11am-1pm our time. I took time out and sat in my armchair, but was destined to watch yet more football and rugby for the first hour. Seemingly the BBC were convinced no one would be interested in the women’s 5,000m semi-finals.

The next day it got even worse. The men’s 100m is one of those blue-riband events. But the BBC showed just four of the seven first-round heats. Not to prioritise another sport this time, but to allow the studio presenters to gas on at great length. You get the picture – and it didn’t get any better.

A couple more thoughts on Olympics and television. I find it really hard to get excited about mainstream sports like tennis and golf in the Olympic context. In fact I wonder if they should even be there.

Why? Not because I have anything against them per se. Indeed I am a big tennis fan. No it is because you know that for runners, swimmers, rowers and so on winning an Olympic gold would be the absolute pinnacle. By contrast, I am pretty certain a tennis player would rank winning a grand slam tournament far higher. Likewise a golfer with a major.

Finally, at the risk of being socially ostracised, I have to say I found the BBC’s coverage far too nationalistic/jingoistic and this obsession over British competitors skewed their coverage. Given the limitations on their total coverage, this came at the cost of top-level sport.

I know everybody supports their home competitors. I was no different urging on Cam, Heather and Carl.

So I don’t blame the BBC as a national broadcaster for focusing on British participants. I just think they took it too far.

With unlimited coverage, there would be no problem with BBC1 spending an hour focusing on the synchronised pogo sticking because a couple of plucky Brits from Essex had an outside chance of a bronze. Particularly as it would be our first medal in pogo sticking since Moscow in 1980.

With the normal wall-to-wall coverage people who preferred to see supreme athletes, most of whom hailed from the Rift Valley rather than the Thames Valley, battle it out in a long distance race could simply use the red button. But this year I can’t help feeling I lost out on oodles of top level action in order to focus obsessively on those plucky Brits, most of whom had seemingly overcome injury and adversity the likes of which sports people from other nations obviously don’t suffer.

Maybe I have a ‘patriotism gene’ missing, but I will go further and say I just love watching top-level sport and don’t obsess too much about where the competitors were born. To the extent that I was truly delighted when the women from Fiji – whose style and spirit I loved – beat the British team to win bronze in the rugby sevens.

One last thought. If I ruled the world, there would be a 100-years rule. Once a country had held the Olympic Games they couldn’t bid again for a century.

If there are really fewer than 25 countries in the world capable of hosting a games, then it has become too big and too commercial.

Finally, my favourite Olympic moment of the bizarrely named Tokyo 2020? It has to be the men’s 400m hurdles final followed closely by the women’s version of the same event. Best Olympic athletics since the men’s 800m final at London 2012.

Another highlight was Steve Cram saying of multiple Olympic sprint champion Elaine Thompson-Herah that ‘her Achilles problems seem to be behind her’. Almost as good as David Coleman once telling us we were going to be watching the pole vaulting over the satellite.