The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

The track cycling has started. (I nearly wrote trick cycling but that's not being introduced until Paris.) This will be the first Olympiad without Dave Brailsford and the Sky Bag of Tricks pulling the strings so expect an avalanche of medals going in everybody else's directions. It started first thing when the men's 4000 metre team pursuit, which we always win at a canter, would have found us outside the medals but for an Aussie handlebar disintegrating. So they haven't forgotten all the old tricks.

[Mick Harper]

I bring you news from across the water. Giles Scott (not Giles Gilbert Scott, the ecclesiastical architect) is several nautical miles ahead of the next dude with one race left. All he's got to do to win gold is not cross the line early and have to go back and start again. So he crosses the line early, goes back, starts again and eventually wins gold by edging into fourth place by half a boat length. It's the way Drake would have done it. Charlie Drake.

[Mick Harper]

We're back on track with the 4000m men's pursuit final. Spotting that we are losing by a street to the Danes, we cunningly detach one of our lads to loiter with intent. Right on cue the Danes, head down for aerodynamic effect intent on setting a new world record, crash into our man and come down in a heap. The commissars are deep in enclave on this one.

You win some, you get the other team DNF'd on some.

[Mick Harper]

Bradley Wiggins, last seen on a motorbike weaving in and out of the peloton during the Tour de France ostensibly reporting for Eurosport ("A lot of the guys were trying to high-five me with their fists, they're a great bunch of lads") is proving an ace conniver in his new role, weaving in and out of the commissariat in the well of the velodrome, ostensibly reporting for Eurosport. "There's talk they may DQ both teams and award gold to the Aussies." So that's put paid to that idea.

[Mick Harper]

Should we extend the vote to Olympic medal-winners? To be honest, I just don't know.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

What is the one piece of intellectual endeavour required of a five thousand metre runner at the Olympics? Find out the qualifying conditions. [It's first six by right and the four fastest losers, if he had.] So Andy Butchart is on the crown of the last bend, fourth place, going like a train. He is then jostled from behind and by the time he gets back in stride six assorted foreigners are out of reach making a bee-line for the tape. So he just gives up. Failed to qualify for the final as a fastest loser by point something something of a second.

I blame comprehensive education. Alf Tupper would never have made that mistake. Because he went to a secondary modern.

[Mick Harper]

Those of you brought up on Kenneth Wolstenholme will/will not be surprised to hear that the modern sports commentator is required to go several hours with nothing much to report. This began with marathons (the races, I mean, not the commentating stints, well actually I do mean that, well whatever I mean I'd better get on with it or you'll be accusing me of it) and reached its apogee (we thought) with the Grand cycling Tours where six hours of watching cyclists riding along in a bunch chatting amiably followed by a thirty second sprint proved no challenge at all.

Enter the Olympic ten kilometre swim. The problem here is not so much nothing happening as nobody being identifiable. Every fifteen minutes or so the competitors pass something or other and their names go up on the screen in the sequence they pass the something or other. Almost invariably in the same order as fifteen minutes before. The commentators were nevertheless non-stop. There should be some sort of Olympic event for them to enter. We Brits could do well even though we are not known for our volubility. There will have to be strict checks that others are actually commentating. Who knows what they are saying?

[Mick Harper]

Further to the above and, sorry, I know I do go on about it, does anyone know whether swimmers do or do not benefit from swimming behind another swimmer. Is it less water resistance or churned up more? Ignore being kicked in the mouth for these purposes.

Come on, Brailsford, fill one of your wind tunnels with brine and put the Ineos practice squad in there to find out!

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

Wrong, as usual, though you were right about the welding. Breathing the fumes all week led to him losing the race on the Saturday, but he did qualify as a runner-up for the Big Race on the following Saturday. He asked the foreman if he could switch over to mowing grass verges and a full five and a half days of breathing in the sweet zephyrs of Old England resulted in the inevitable triumph.

[Mick Harper]

Talking of Alf Tupper, Sebastian Coe was interviewed trackside yesterday.

[Mick Harper]

India have avoided the follow-on.