If there’s one thing more depressing than the Olympics ‘opening ceremony’, it’s the closing ceremony. The purpose of the opening ceremony is to bore everyone to tears and incitement to suicide. It goes on for 13 hours and even if its not raining it can only be seen as some vanity-project of narcissistic artistic directors who, if its wasn’t for the Olympics, I would call ‘on steroids’. Such metaphors can never be uttered near any cyclist. Sprinter. Boxer. Athlete. I’d even test the horses. But at least, once that ceremony is over, we get two weeks of amazing sport to enjoy, get exited about, to follow and to cry about. Excessively. Ok, it’s also an amazing parade of amazing abs, flying pony-tails and incredible thighs, but this is not the place for such objectifying discourse. So I never look forward to the Olympics, then the opening ceremony makes it all seem much worse. But once it starts…

It’s just amazing. Captivating. And so I really don’t want it to finish. But it does and that closing ceremony will confirm that by rubbing salt in the wounds. Probably making me cry all over again.

Yesterday I found a new sport. But literally. They invented it for Paris and by the next Olympics it will be gone. Which is a bit of a tragedy. Yesterday’s final was won by Japan in the ‘goldfish on the kitchen floor’ competition. Or ‘break dancing’ as ‘they’ call it. Simply incredible. Two women hurling themselves around the floor like they’re having a severe epileptic episode, but controlled, gymnastic, athletic, and all in rhythm with the (obviously horrible, garage-type, hip-hop, terrible young-person) music. The Japanese woman out-flapped the Lithuanian but it was possibly the best thing in the entire Olympics. Because it was 10% physical brilliance and 90% attitude. Like Simone Biles in an MandM film. The two girls, competing for the gold, encouraged each other throughout, praised each other, applauded. There was love. I cried. Obviously.

An Englishman won a bike race in the velodrome. The place where all logic is suspended at the door, where gravity is defied, where if you think you understand what’s going on in any particular race, then you’ve got it wrong. But the power they use, the speed, the total spectacle is pure brilliance.

And finally, Katarina Johnson-Thomson-Fromson-Watson won an Olympic medal in the pentathlon. The ultimate statement of ‘you reckon you’re special for being great in a sport? Well I’m fucking brilliant in 5!!!!’

And the ‘women’s’ boxing. Hmmmmm…

You just can’t have men hitting women. It’s unfair, it’s unbalanced, it’s ridiculous and it’s downright fucking dangerous. I don’t care that Imane Kelif has ‘been a woman since her (rather gender-ambiguous) birth’, ‘she’ is a man in virtually every physical way… that is observable with clothes on. Which therefore renders the entire sporting competition ‘unsafe’. And renders the entire ‘Olympic committee in charge of such things’ (because there will be one, if not about 7), total tossers.

Otherwise: BEST OLYMPICS EVERRRRRRR!!!!

Happy final 2 days

A xxxx

(2 years ago today my lovely old dad died)