Tim’s SoS

Please don’t let it end……..

The London Olympics is the best thing there has ever been on TV. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried and I’ve run around my house screaming with joy.

Not only has it been a success for our medal count, it’s also been a huge success in making us proud of our country and hopefully it will leave a legacy. I’ll get onto that later.

So what were your highlights? Look, as Ian Thorpe would say, there are too many great moments for me to even start to make a list.

But I’ve watched the Olympics every time and I believe the real highlight has been the TV experience. I have never had so much choice. On Freesat I didn’t miss a thing. Well that’s a lie actually as there was so much sport you couldn’t get to watch it all. Seriously, how good was the Olympics on TV?

At one stage I stood on the remote control by a mistake, I forgot other channels were still broadcasting.

The biggest realisation I’ve had over the past week is how important time is if you’re an Olympian. How unbelievably long is a second in the Olympic Games? From sprinting to cycling through to basketball, hundredths of a second can be the difference between standing on a podium or going back to the village empty handed.

Little gems for me were discovering sports I didn’t know anything about. Handball has arrived on the map. Not only do I want to watch it, I’m gutted it wasn’t around when I was younger as I would have loved to have played it. Apparently all the UK handball sites crashed with demand for information.

The omnium in cycling was also a great watch, especially the elimination round. As someone said to me on twitter “all political disagreements should be settled with an omnium”. It would certainly make the world a better place.

My only criticism would be women’s gymnastics. The women are amazing, but the floor routines looked a bit dated. They need to drop the music and just do the tumbles like the men.

So on to the legacy. Apart from encouraging everyone to do more sport, hopefully it will change a few attitudes. For instance if you’ve watched handball, basketball, water polo and hockey they all have contact and none of the players seem to dive or feign injury. Also none of them run after the refs hurling abuse. There’s total respect for the officials and the oppo which makes our national sport, football, look a bit crass. As many papers and columnists have said, football is not looking good at the moment.

As a Chelsea fan I’ve had to put up with more than my fair share of divers so I know how frustrating it is. I don’t think we should ‘football bash’ as it’s one of the great sports in the world, but now is the ideal time for the players and authorities to clean the game up and bring it up to date. No more cheating the fans!

Also doing the rounds online is the excitement of good female role models like Jess Ennis, Jade Jones, Lizzie Armitstead, Victoria Pendleton, Becky Adlington ….the list is endless. This is a subject close to my heart being a father of two daughters.  There’s actually a campaign to try and encourage the media to feature better female role models, but if people are still watching TOWIE and shows on Katie Price, we only have ourselves to blame.

Maybe the real Olympic legacy will be our children aspiring to be more than just reality stars. We can dream!

Next up is the Paralympics which is also going to be amazing and make us proud all over again.

See you then.

Tim

Read Tim’s blog from Tuesday 31st July 2012