Formula One in Bahrain
May I suggest that we all show our disgust at the non-cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix, by not watching or listening to the race. Even without satellite TV, I’m certain I can find something else to watch or listen to.
I suspect that the race clashes on Sunday with the London Marathon and I might go to see that anyway.
Getting Emotional
I can sometimes get very emotional and start crying quietly. I did this morning in Carluccio’s in Islington. I’ve talked of this before. All I was doing as reading the colour magazine in The Times and especially the piece about some of the people who had won medals at the 1948 Games after suffering badly in the war.
The star of those Games was the Dutch female athlete, Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals. The Dutch presented her with a new bicycle.
One other competitor I’d heard of was the Hungarian marksman, Karoly Takacs, who after losing his right hand to a grenade accident, learned to shoot left handed and won gold. He also won gold four years later in Helsinki.
One amazing tale concerns Jim Halliday, who fought in the retreat from Dunkirk and later was captured by the Japanese in 1942. On release from the his POW camp, he weighed just 27 Kg. He then won silver or bronze, depending on the source, in the wrestling. Sadly he died in 2007, so won’t be able to present any medals. Perhaps, he has a son or daughter, who can be asked!
And people moan about, VAT on pies and pasties. They don’t know they’re alive.
To me though, the crying may also be about my eyes telling me that they have now wetted up and are not as bone dry as they have been in recent months. Two years ago, a nurse treated them and said they were the driest eyes she’d ever seen. She gave me some artificial tears, but I can’t put anything in my eyes.
It’s not as if this day is anything significant in my life, as my son died on the 23rd, not the 30th.
Perhaps, I’m just one of those people, who needs to cry!
An Interview With Roger Bannister
The Times today has a long interview of Sir Roger Bannister by Matthew Syed. Beg, borrow or steal a copy of the paper to read the article.
Syed finishes the article with this paragraph.
After two hours of conversation, it seems as if we have barely scratched the surface of Bannister’s extraordinary life. To meet him is to come face to face with a seminal figure in British history, but also to perceive a kinder, more civilised epoch. Bannister is an intellectual, a patriot and a man of tremendous honour. In every sense, a great Briton.
If anybody deserves to receive the Order of Merit it is Sir Roger.
A Row About the GB Athletics Team Captain
There has been a bit of a row about Tiffany Porter being appointed GB Team Captain for the World Indoor Athletics Championships. It’s reported here properly in the Guardian, but some papers seem to be following a rather different tack.
It would appear that Tiffany has two of the things that make me British; a British mother and a UK passport. I have a British father as well. Mo Farah incidentally, has a father who was born in England, has been here since he was eight and has a British passport.
So if Tiffany is the best for the job, why shouldn’t she have it, as in my view she’s more British than many in various British teams?
In some ways we put too much emphasis on where you are born and sadly, the race of your parents. Sometimes, some sports generally get it right. Freddie Brown, Colin Cowdrey, Ted Dexter, Gubby Allen, George Harris, Nasser Hussain, Douglas Jardine and Pelham Warner, all captained England at cricket, despite being born outside of the UK. This is not a complete list and I have also left out others born in the UK, but who were not English.
Graeme Obree’s Idea to Stop Drug Cheats
Graeme Obree has just said on BBC Radio 5, that the best way to stop drugs cheats in cycling is not to give them their prize money until several years after the event.
But why not add swimming, athletics, and of course, weight-lifting?
Standing Up To Cancer
Another obituary in The Times today is of Frank Horwill. By forming the British Milers Club and developing advanced training methods, he had a lot to do with the success of British middle-distance runners in the 1970s and 1980s.
He didn’t fit in with the athletics administrators, but how many great coaches in any sport do? And how many useless coaches do well-funded sports employ?
It was this paragraph in the obituary that I liked.
Four years later Horwill was found to be suffering from stomach cancer. He reacted with the sort of resolve that he sought in his athletes. To the consternation of his nurses he got out of bed each day to exercise with a drip attached to him. “I am going to enjoy this day,” was his mantra. He survived for another 23 years.
C had that attitude to her breast cancer and won by a mile. Sadly, her cancer of the heart was a much tougher problem.
In some ways though, Frank got the last laugh, as after serving a prison term for tax evasion, which was essentially to fund his athletes, he was rewarded with an MBE last year.
Scott Overall Does An Ian Thompson
Scott Overall’s performance in the Berlin Marathon would appear to the uninitiated to be a glorious one-off.
But it’s happened before with British athletes in the marathon. Go back thirty years or so and Ian Thompson won the British marathon championship on his debut, when he just made up the team. He then went on to win two gold medals in major championships.
You could argue that Thompson’s performance was better, in that he won and Overall didn’t. But then today, training methods are better and more scientific and there may well be a lot more to come from Overall.
Let’s hope that Scott Overall is worthy of and fit for selection next year for the London Olympics. If he improves substantially, as he well might, then the marathon could be one of the highlights of the athletics.
I have a feeling a two pound win double of Overall and Radcliffe might just be the bet right now.
We must never underestimate the value of a home venue. It did wonders for the Spaniards in Barcelona.
The Infrastructure’s The Star
On the one hand I watching athletics on the BBC in the centre of Newcastle amongst all of the bridges and the iconic buildings. It’s called the Great North City Games.
On the other hand, I’ve just had an e-mail describing the Sound Tracks Festival in East London, which is taking place at three main venues and you get between them on the East London line. Someone has remarked that it’s quicker to get between stages, using the train, that walking through the mud at Glastonbury. And of course there’ll be acoustic acts, including bands and a harpist on the connecting trains. I wonder what the Brunels would have said, if they’d known that their Thames Tunnel, would be transporting mobile concert halls between the two sides of the river.
We now have some fantastic pieces of infrastructure, both new and old and we should be imaginative about how we use them.
After Ruining Horse Racing and Cricket Coverage, are Channel 4 Now Doing It With Athletics?
I have not watched any of Channel 4’s coverage of the World Athletics Championships in Daegu, and it seems according to this article in the Guardian, I’m not missing much, by listening on the radio.
They try too hard to make sure they get the advertisers, that they ruin the product. They did this with horseracing and now it has been dumbed down so much I don’t watch.
In the end, there is only two ways to show quality sport; either-free-to-air without advertising or by subscription. I know Sky has adverts and they can be irritating, but their presenters are generally professional. Comparing Sky coverage of the Champions League, with that of ITV, is much more than a matter of chalk and cheese.
We won’t have to worry for long though, as events like the Athletics World Championship will be available on a quality basis over the Internet in the near future for a fee. And hopefully for a fee that has two levels; one with advertising and one without.
Farce Start
What is going on at the World Athletic Chanmpionships in Daegu?
For a start there is no live pictures in the UK and we have to do with just the radio commentary.
I’ve just found that the pictures have been on Channel 4, but as I never watch that channel normally, how was I to know? I didn’t see anything in the papers and searching for details on the Internet didn’t seem to work.
Would I have watched it, if I’d found it? Probably the pictures only, with sound from BBC Radio 5.
But the starts of the various races seem to be bordering on the farcical. Here’s a typical report.
Let’s hope they all get this sorted by the Olympics next ear!
The Anonymous Widower 