Sporting Polemics

Matt Syed; Cynic or Enlightened Realist? Olympic notes No1

Saturday, 31 July 2010 12:59 |

Two years minus one day to go until the London Olympics and Simon Barnes is getting all misty-eyed in The Times 28/7/10. As he waxes lyrical about the Olympics and, ‘their unique tension, their unique meaning’, he tells us cynics to look elsewhere. I took his advice and turned to Matthew Syed’s column in the sports pages. What a welcome relief. It is not cynicism that Syed was offering but hard nosed realism. And as the London Olympic clock ticks away and the hyperbole become ever more intense we will all be in desperate need of some down to earth realism. Here is a sample of what Barnes might regard as cynicism but which I regard as a much needed breath of fresh air. That entire official marketing bumph from Sebastian Coe was starting to suffocate me.

The London Olympics – Two Years to Go.

Wednesday, 28 July 2010 15:59 |

I learned today that were was exactly two years to go before the official start of the London Olympics so I rushed out to buy a selection of newspapers to see what they had to say. I was sorely disappointed. I scanned through copies of The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian and only the later attempted some serious journalism. The first two publications offered nothing but bland platitudes about medal hopes, organisational matters and legacy hopes. Both printed Seb Coe’s vacuous ‘Plan Your Games’ speech without any corresponding editorial comment. It was left to The Guardian’s Owen Gibson, one of Britain’s most rigorous sports journalists, to dig a little deeper behind the headlines. Gibson has a proud record in this respect.

Festival of Olympic Elitism

Thursday, 18 February 2010 11:04 |

With the exception of the state sponsored Chinese competitors, can you imagine any of the Olympic athletes competing at the winter games in Vancouver being from anywhere other than a privileged background? I’m happy to be proven wrong but the sort of lifestyle required to be slogging up and down ski slopes and the like just does not seem to chime with the day to day grind of working class life. And if the odd proletarian competitor did slip through the net, you can rest assured they are even more unlikely to be among the medal winners.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 18 February 2010 11:39 )

Lord of the Rings, Andrew Anthony, The Observer, 19/07/09

Saturday, 08 August 2009 11:12 |

This was not the first and it definitely will not be the last, but Andrew Anthony has produced a thought provoking assessment of Lord Sebastian Newbold Coe, Knight of the British Empire, twice Olympic 1,5000m winner, former Tory MP and advisor to William Hague, and current Chairman of the London Organising Committee of the 2012 Olympic Games.

Last Updated ( Friday, 18 September 2009 11:00 )