The Olympic Games

The 2012 Olympic Games kicks off this week, so I thought it a reasonable time to chuck my opinion about the whole thing into the mix.

I like the idea of the Olympics, bringing the greatest sportsmen and women in the world together to find out who really is the best in their chosen discipline. What makes the games more credible is the fact that it has history behind it. We all know it started in Greece at Olympia, but did you know it dates back almost three thousand years? Certainly puts the Commonwealth Games in the shade in that respect. At the last summer games there were 10,500 competitors from 204 countries. Impressive.

Well, kind of. What the hell were these people competing in exactly? They can’t all run the 100m (although it’d be fun to watch). I wonder how many events the average person on the street can name. A dozen? Twenty? Well there are apparently twenty six sports but after you break them into disciplines and weight divisions you’re looking at three hundred events (since a sport called ‘athletics’ would be pretty vague). That’s quite a lot. There are thirty four swimming events and that’s just races, not any of that synchronised stuff or falling off a tall ladder gracefully crap. Thirty four! How many different ways of swimming from one side of a pool to the other do we need? Surely it shouldn’t matter? No-one defines how people run in the 100 metres; they’re just told to do it as fast as possible. Same should apply with swimming: get from point A to point B as fast as you can. Job done. Besides would anyone really use the butterfly stroke if they fell out of a boat? It’s as pointless as the egg and spoon race at school, and they’re not making that an Olympic event.

There are plenty of daft events at the Olympics. You know what makes no sense to me? The walking race. Talk about an oxymoron; no-one ever raced anywhere by walking. Honestly, it’s so stupid it hardly bares thinking about. These people waddle along, looking like they’re in desperate need of a shit, for fifty kilometres. I just don’t get it. If it was a race then you’d run, or at least jog. Surely no-one takes them seriously. Are these athletes not good enough to run anywhere but they’re brilliant waddlers? Is it how the long distance runners start off and then they graduate into a sport where people won’t mercilessly take the piss out of them? And who watches each person for fifty kilometres in case they try and break into a bit of a jog when no-one’s looking?

Also, who came up with the triple jump? A hop, skip and a jump. What logical combination is that for anything? The long jump makes loads of sense – see who can jump the furthest, but who thought, “let’s do that, but with a whacky combination of moves before the jump?” Did anyone test them for drug use?

Every now and again a bunch of people get together and lobby for additional sports to be added. Normally the people doing the lobbying are the people who are really good at the sport in question. Makes sense to me, which is why I’ve been lobbying (unsuccessfully) for Jagermeister drinking to be included in 2012. American football was included a couple of times (1904 and 1932) and guess what? That’s right, almost everyone competing was American... because no-one else plays it. That’s a sure fire of boosting the medal haul, eh? Hot Air Ballooning was included once, and I’m all for that. As long as it’s combined with shooting that could be loads of fun.

Football (the real name for what some people refer to as soccer) is an oddity at the Olympics, mainly because countries are restricted in who they can use. Obviously there are many, highly organised and well known football leagues around the world governed by FIFA who don’t want something as trivial as the Olympics overshadowing the World Cup. So the compromise is that Olympic football squads need to be compiled almost entirely of players under the age of twenty three. While I understand the issue it does serve to make something of a mockery of the Olympic competition.

Every time the Olympics (or any sporting event for that matter) comes around the media become obsessed with how well Great Britain is doing. Because of the pessimistic nature of the media we never think we’ve done as well as we should have done, but let me tell you that we’re third in the combined (summer and winter) overall medal table, behind the USA and Soviet Union. The latter doesn’t even exist anymore so we’ll overtake them eventually (although the ‘new’ Russia will probably have overtaken us by then). The USA’s population count is five times ours though and Russia’s is double, so they both have a much bigger pool of talent to choose from. In that respect we’re doing well, since we’re only the twenty third most populated country in the world.

We could be doing better though and you know who’s to blame? Schools. Yes, schools are to blame with their ridiculous ideas around stopping kids competing with one another. Let me tell you something else, the person who said “it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part” was a person who never won a thing. How could they have? You never heard Linford Christie say that after he won the 100m gold did you? I bet the bloke who came last did though.

So now schools have stopped competitive sports on the basis it excludes those who are not good at it while lowering their confidence and self esteem. Here’s a newsflash for the morons who came up with that pseudo-protective claptrap: life is a competition and the kids you’re trying to shield need to get used to it. The sooner they do, the better, because you can’t stick them in a protective bubble for their entire lives. Will they get the same protection at interviews so they won’t feel bad if they don’t get the job? When they’re looking for a partner and their ideal one chooses someone else who will pat them on the head and offer consolation? If anything you’ll be leaving them at a bigger disadvantage because some schools will be sensible enough to continue competition and its children will embrace it from an earlier age.

If schools stop mucking about we can look forward to the next generation of successful sportsmen and women coming through the ranks, otherwise we’ll be left with a bunch of crying babies. That’s never going to look impressive when the Olympics are broadcast to the world.

Update: Even British Prime Minister David Cameron agrees with me. I didn't know he was a reader.

Football

It’s a divisive subject, make no mistake about it. The very mention of the game will have some people frothing at the mouth about a mistake (or wonderful piece of skill) while others will be equally animated about what a pointless game it is, supported by neanderthals.

I like football, but I’m not a neanderthal (although I am biased). I think my enjoyment came from playing the game first, as a kid, and being a fan came second. Still, I enjoy watching the best players in the world dazzle audiences with breathtaking moments of skill. Like most people though I do not enjoy watching some chancer collapse like he’s been shot in the face because an opposing player brushed his elbow. Gamesmanship, or ‘cheating’ as I like to call it, is increasing within the game but I see little effort to stamp in out (excuse the pun). These cheats never seem to be punished after the game when video replays clearly show they’ve tried to con the ref (and a couple of million people watching). How do these guys have the nerve to face anyone when they know TV cameras will have captured them writhing around the floor in pretend agony before jumping to their feet with a smile on their face once the referee falls for their charade and cautions the other player? It’s embarrassing.

What gets me really going is the word soccer; a word invented to describe football by people who barely play the game (because they quite liked the name football and wanted it for their own sport). Look, we had it first okay? Please make the effort to come up with a more appropriate name for American football. If we’re being accurate, maybe you could go with Handegg since you throw the ball and it’s shaped like an egg. See what I did there? How you can pretend to call a game football when neither a foot nor a ball is involved is beyond me.

I have nothing against the game of American football. It doesn’t really interest me and I don’t find it entertaining but, as an Englishman, I’m not about to go down the ‘real men play rugby’ road I hear so often because I do understand the differences. In rugby you play the ball, in American football you play the man and if someone weighing 130kgs was running at me with the sole intention of flipping me upside down then I’d want armour too. And maybe a gun.

Of course the thing which really gets the anti-football brigade in gear are the salaries. As we know, there is no salary cap in place. When the old English First Division ceased to exist and was replaced by the Premier League (in 1992), the average salary of a player in the league was reported to be £75,000 per year. By 2000 this figure had risen to £409,000 and was up to £676,000 in 2003. Now it’s around £1,200,000. That’s more than £21,000 a week, which is around the national average wage… for a year.

Let’s not forget that those are the average figures. Some will be earning less, but then many of them do little more than warm the bench for a team fighting relegation week in, week out. At the other end of the scale some players are earning mind boggling figures. After Wayne Rooney stated his intention to leave Manchester United he was eventually persuaded to stay and this was doubtless aided by a significant pay rise. Estimations vary, but the figure banded around is around the £200,000 mark… a week. That’s a cool £10m a year, before personal sponsorship deals. It’s not that unusual though and there are more than a few players on similar amounts of money, if not more. When Christiano Ronaldo left Manchester United for Real Madrid in a world record £80m transfer in 2008 he struck a deal which earned him cash by the bucket load. But the salaries from their clubs don’t present the whole picture. According to Forbes, David Beckham and Ronaldo collected £29.3m and £27.1m respectively last year. Reckon you could get by on half a million pounds a week?

The trouble is, people see these figures and they then see the country in a recession and people struggling to pay rent. What do these footballers do that deserves so much money – a ludicrous amount of money? They’re not curing cancer and they’re not saving lives, they’re simply playing a game that many people do across the world for free. Fans are being charged more and more at the turnstiles and must wonder sometimes why they bother when they see a dire performance from one of their team’s players before he hops in his Lamborghini and heads back to his eight bedroomed mansion.

The answer is simple: supply and demand. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. You might not agree with Ronaldo’s wages but the point is that you cannot do what he can with a football. People pay to be entertained by him, media pay for broadcast rights and companies pay to be associated with him. Absolutely, it is a far less significant role than the nurse at your local hospital but many more people are capable of performing that role and the salary reflects it. It might not be right and it might not be moral, but it is the way of the world.

Former player Robbie Savage waded into a discussion on the subject, citing that his fellow professionals were worth the money. He was quoted out of context by the press, even though he said that soldiers and medical professionals should be paid more. His final point was “who wouldn’t take the money if it’s on offer?”

Football is not alone in this respect. Forbes list the top ten highest paid athletes and it only contains two footballers. The rest come from boxing, golf, basketball, tennis and American football. Despite Tiger Woods suffering sex scandals, the break-up of his marriage and the loss of sponsors he probably wouldn’t get out of bed for Ronaldo’s wages. He reportedly pocked £37.8m last year. Although that’s a huge amount of money he was still beaten by Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao with the former collecting a very tidy £54.2m. I’m sure that’ll be comforting while he’s sat in his jail cell.

There has to be a ceiling for these wages, but you wonder where it is. Go back to my earlier figure of £21,000 a week for the average player in the English Premier League and compare that to the £100 earned by players when England won the World Cup in 1966. That’s quite some increase (even when you include inflation).

Having said that, after England’s recent performances many people would have begrudged them earning even £100. This is a common complaint: do these millionaire footballers care? Of course they care, but do they care enough? After all they’re set for life and have everything they need. I’ll be honest, I can’t understand an argument which revolves around saying, “you’re paid a fortune, just do better”. You could pay me millions and I wouldn’t be any good; the money is irrelevant in that respect.

Experts

This is going to maybe sound a bit odd, so bear with me a second: what is the point in having experts? There exists at least a thousand ‘experts’ in absolutely anything you could possibly mention. Don’t believe me? Name something then. There are experts in everything from growing grass to putting a bloke on the moon.

I’m not decrying experts as a whole because I reckon putting someone on the moon is pretty specialised and a damned sight more complicated than getting grass to grow (side note: it does it by itself! You’re no more an expert in that than I am in making the sun come up each bloody morning!). My beef is where there is no proven correct answer and you end up with a group of spectacle wearing men in white coats arguing at two polar opposites. Surely at this point you cannot regard them as experts anymore than a ‘bunch of people who have an opinion’?

Want some examples? Global warming. On one hand it’s being caused by me every time I turn on a light or start my car. On the other hand, shit happens and the planet naturally cycles through phases of warming before cooling again. There you have two camps of thought which could not possibly be any further apart. One of these camps is very, very wrong. No longer are they ‘experts’ and they might consider re-classifying themselves as ‘idiots’. Which camp? I don’t know, I’m not the one professing to be a bloody expert.

Another example? Food and drink. Not a day goes by without some media-spotlight chasing ‘expert’ proclaiming that his research conclusively proves you’ll die for eating something which was previously considered healthy. That on its own would be fine, and useful information, if it wasn’t for the fact that all these ‘experts’ contradict one another at every turn. Not only do they contradict one another but they’ll also leave out critical details when presenting good news. For example, red wine is good for the heart, but will give you liver failure. I’ve stopped paying attention now because otherwise I’d never eat anything. I expect I’ll open a paper tomorrow and discover that potatoes are good for my digestive system but will make my head fall off. On balance, they’re probably best avoided but then except another ‘expert’ will denounce the theory completely and state that potatoes are wonderful for my joints and my head will stay exactly where it is.

For years ‘experts’ thought the world was flat. At no point during their retarded bickering did anyone think to hop in a boat and go and find out (mainly because they were worried about falling off the edge. Really?!). For centuries the likes of Pythagoras and Aristotle claimed the Earth was spherical, whilst being laughed at. Eventually someone did jump in a boat went, looked and didn’t fall off the edge. The only thing he needed to be an expert in was pointing a ship in one direction. All the boffins left at home had little idea of the outcome, so what value had they added? If I want to know whether there’s a shop around the corner I’ll go and have a look, I don’t need a team of experts to theorise over probabilities and give me an answer which proves nothing either way.

The BP fiasco at the Deepwater Horizon rig made headlines across the world, for months. Why? Because it took them five months from the date of the explosion to completely seal the well and stop the thing pumping oil into the ocean. Let me say that again: five months. And this was major international news; the biggest environmental disaster in years and one of the biggest oil spills ever. It cost billions of dollars in clean-up money and the lives of countless animals. So, how many experts do you think were involved? I’m gonna go long and plump for ‘just about every marine and drilling expert on the planet’. Why did it take five months then? I’m going to guess again: because they were probably all sat in a bloody room disagreeing with each other.

So called ‘experts’ will disagree on many things which could kill us. Mobile phone technology and wireless networking still haven’t been put to bed although the general consensus is they’re okay. What, completely okay or only a small percentage of users will develop brain tumours and die? We need to know, because there’s still a group of ‘experts’ who aren’t convinced, even though they could end up looking really stupid if it’s all fine and dandy.

The ‘experts’ I have the least amount of time for are those in financial markets. These guys don’t even have to back anything up with proof! If a scientist makes a medical breakthrough he would be expected to show the calculations and substance behind his findings. Not so in the financial market. It seems that if you work for an estate agent you are automatically a ‘property market expert’ and what you say regarding the future of the market should be taken as gospel. Just because someone showed a couple round a two bed flat in Clapham he is not qualified to talk about the state of the recession. The same thing applies to bankers, except more so because they’re the very reason we’re in a recession. 

I could probably go on for days on the subject, but I’m sure I’ve made my point by now. Sure, people will disagree with each other but if one side has a well based, water tight and scientific explanation why something happens then anyone who doesn’t agree is moronic. They’re likely to be in the minority once everyone else has sided with the smart bloke anyway, so no-one will listen. The fact that things don’t happen this way leads me to believe that most of it isn’t water tight and isn’t scientific. In fact, I bet they’re all just winging it.