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The Olympic Games so far
Aug. 1st, 2012 11:13 pmThe Olympics are always one of the highlights of my - er - Olympiad (OK, "quadrennium") and so far, despite the lack relative paucity of gold for Great Britain (not forgetting our representatives from Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and quite possibly the Channel Islands) the whole event has exceeded my expectations. I won't claim that things have been perfect, but at worst there has been a valiant effort to attempt to fix the bugs that have arisen. ( Ticketing. )
TV coverage has been a quantum leap forward from that of previous events. The BBC, and many of the other rights-holding broadcasters, have made almost all the action available live. ( It has broadly been a very good Games for the BBC, though - again - far from perfect. )
It amuses to me to consider the likely reactions of a theoretical alien visitor who came to visit the Olympics and make a ludographic study of them. The different sports display a great variety of procedure and inconsistencies; there does not seem to be nearly the extent of sharing of best practice from one sport to another that there could be, and there seem to be few or no reasons for the differences other than preserving tradition - tradition often borne of historical accident. This is an example of the sort of social conservatism of which I am generally disfavourable. ( I'll go on... )( That fencing controversy in full, and technological limits on timing. )( One day I want to produce a meaningful ranking table of sports. )( On target sports: bad shooting, good shooting, archery and the tragedy of darts. )
In conclusion, I am delighted that London was selected to host the Olympic events for the year, from torch relay to Paralympics, and so far consider that it has done the job tremendously well and is likely to carry off the rest of the job with aplomb. That said, a nagging doubt leaves me thinking that the French passion for grands projets and public engineering means that they might have done it better still. Part of me would be happy to live in a world where Paris got the Olympics and we got the 2018 World Cup instead, even considering that FIFA are actually even worse than the IOC for being over-reaching self-interested supra-governmental global detriments and general public nuisances. We all know that Malthusian bargains don't work that way, and more likely we would have been left onlooking everything, again.
Hosting an Olympic Games is inherently an unreasonable proposition. Then again, so was building a Millennium Dome. It may have been fashionable to criticise the Millennium Experience at the time (and I will say that there was a lot of "try lots of different things to see what works" playing safe to it, though the results were not without high spots) but I do think that the continued existence of the building as an indoor arena adds to London life. Fingers crossed that the Olympic infrastructure does find a good eventual use. I am far more convinced, and far less merely hopeful, than ever before that it will all prove to have been well and truly worth it.
TV coverage has been a quantum leap forward from that of previous events. The BBC, and many of the other rights-holding broadcasters, have made almost all the action available live. ( It has broadly been a very good Games for the BBC, though - again - far from perfect. )
It amuses to me to consider the likely reactions of a theoretical alien visitor who came to visit the Olympics and make a ludographic study of them. The different sports display a great variety of procedure and inconsistencies; there does not seem to be nearly the extent of sharing of best practice from one sport to another that there could be, and there seem to be few or no reasons for the differences other than preserving tradition - tradition often borne of historical accident. This is an example of the sort of social conservatism of which I am generally disfavourable. ( I'll go on... )( That fencing controversy in full, and technological limits on timing. )( One day I want to produce a meaningful ranking table of sports. )( On target sports: bad shooting, good shooting, archery and the tragedy of darts. )
In conclusion, I am delighted that London was selected to host the Olympic events for the year, from torch relay to Paralympics, and so far consider that it has done the job tremendously well and is likely to carry off the rest of the job with aplomb. That said, a nagging doubt leaves me thinking that the French passion for grands projets and public engineering means that they might have done it better still. Part of me would be happy to live in a world where Paris got the Olympics and we got the 2018 World Cup instead, even considering that FIFA are actually even worse than the IOC for being over-reaching self-interested supra-governmental global detriments and general public nuisances. We all know that Malthusian bargains don't work that way, and more likely we would have been left onlooking everything, again.
Hosting an Olympic Games is inherently an unreasonable proposition. Then again, so was building a Millennium Dome. It may have been fashionable to criticise the Millennium Experience at the time (and I will say that there was a lot of "try lots of different things to see what works" playing safe to it, though the results were not without high spots) but I do think that the continued existence of the building as an indoor arena adds to London life. Fingers crossed that the Olympic infrastructure does find a good eventual use. I am far more convinced, and far less merely hopeful, than ever before that it will all prove to have been well and truly worth it.
