The good thing about the Olympics is that its on for the entire day and most of the night. The bad thing is that its on for the entire day and most of the night. So I decided (very very early on in my life) that I would not stay up til 3 in the morning to watch Adam Peaty win Britain’s first gold medal of the Games.

There’s just so many games of things being played simultaneously that you suffer with overload and FOMO at the same time. For that alone the Olympic Games must be admired. For creating new, otherwise uncharted, levels of human discomfort. And I thought Spurs fans new every single imaginable type of sporting discomfort going.

You watch football, its on, they play, its done. The Olympics is so different. I don’t exactly ‘watch’ it like football, instead I kind’a dip in and out. And when faced yesterday with fencing, table-tennis or a 3 hour bike ride (the Olympic one, not me, my bike limit is strictly 10 minutes to the tube station) I faced immediate boredom. I don’t like any’a them.

But sport-watching is like heroin. It takes just 10 seconds and you’re addicted. Its called ‘snooker syndrome’ or ‘darts disease’, when any mind-blowingly boring un-spectator worthy sport is placed before you and quicker than you can say: “I’m not watching this sh-” you’re hooked. Perhaps its something evolved into the male psyche, the same gene that makes it impossible not to turn and look at the girl who just walked past you wearing Levis.

Fencing is wonderful. I wish they’d let them stab each other, but alas, they’ve changed it to Fencing Pokemon and its all digital, all electronic and virtual. Helmets flash, buzzers bleep, all manner of electro-wizardry tell you whether the geezer you can’t see because he’s wearing so much protective gear, would have been injured if he hadn’t been wearing it. Its brilliant.

The cycling was different. A sea of lycra sets out on the Copacabana, at the front Lizzie Armistead, the great British hope. World Champion road race cyclist. Who almost didn’t race because she’d failed to take a dope test. Which is way different from failing a dope test. Way different. And because she’s not in any way Russian, we’ll certainly give her the benefit of the doubt. As did the Olympic committee who ‘pardoned’ her. 3 minutes into the race she gets a puncture. Not her, the bike. Its not fencing.

I’m not saying ‘God done it’ nor ‘karma is the ultimate judge’, I’m just tellin’ the story. She came 5th. After a horrendous crash took out the leading Dutch girl. Who crashed because the games are in Brazil. A nation that lives for style and beauty over health and safety. For which I actually admire them. But they had the race on a road that, when wet, as it was yesterday, has a downhill stretch that is lethal. The men crashed there the previous day. But its beautiful. Looks great on tv. Windy steep road through the forest leading to the coast. I travelled that road after I went for lunch with Christ the Redeemer. Was bad enough in a jeep.

Our prize fencer failed to win the bronze. Lizzie just missed a medal. The Murray brothers are out of the tennis doubles. I hope, after the wonders of London 2012, that this is not to be an ‘ahhhhh, just missed out’ Olympics for my team. Perhaps they just need more drugs.

Happy monday

A xxxx