The more yoof-targeted sports like the BMX and breaking have obviously benefited from having an informal, enthusiastic style like Marc Churchill and Tim Warwood in the skateboarding. Chapeau as always to the mighty Andrew Cotter and Hazel Irvine for their unflappable, indefatigable work on the ceremonies and elsewhere.
Overall, the blend of every second of action being on Discovery+ and the BBC having to cherry-pick as best it could worked out fine. I cannot say there were any particular moments where I felt like I was missing out on something essential as a BBC viewer. One reason for having sport on the BBC is the argument that free-to-air television is accessible to all and thus most likely to inspire the next Denise or Laura.
Perhaps, although clearly the sports that Britain is consistently excelling at are the ones that either not many other countries do, or are realistically accessible only to a sliver of society worldwide, or ones in which the targeted, calculated application of money and infrastructure can deliver irresistible golden advantage. I am not personally convinced that sailing or rowing, for instance, are going to yield Team GB fewer medals in the 2044 Olympics because they were slightly less comprehensively viewable on free-to-air TV in 2024.
Perhaps the Olympics are inspiring people to the point of derangement
Whether the Olympics and visibility have any bearing on the nation’s fitness or appetite for sport still seems debatable. YouGov produced a poll at the weekend asking Britons if they reckoned they could qualify for the LA Olympics if they began training today. Twenty-seven per cent of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen think they could. Absolutely amazing that these people walk among us, or at least lumber on their knuckles among us. Twenty-seven per cent! And in the 18-to-24 age group, fully 17 per cent of respondents reckoned that they could get into the 100m sprint if they gave it a crack until 2028. Simply astonishing: perhaps the Olympics are actually inspiring people too much. Inspired to the point of derangement.
Or maybe we as a nation are so removed from physical activity that we have lost all sense of how it is done. But they say you have to see it to be it and, on that score at least, we have seen everything we could have wished for over these last three weeks.
