Something has gone horribly wrong with the TEAM GB sports men and women in Beijing. A quick glanceat the table to the left shows that Great Britain are having a disastrous Olympics Games and have risen to third place.
"I assure you" said some Olympic Wonk, "that we will sit down and pose some serious questions to our Athletes when they return and try to reach a solution to reverse this unfortunate set of events".
Damn right mister because this just isn't good enough. Us British are just not accustomed to seeing our boys and girls standing on an Olympic Podium belting out how they want God to save the Queen with Gold medals adorning their chests.
What we do is sigh and hope that an asteroid hits the American runner who is jumping around excitedly after winning the 200m (show some stiff upper lip you American boys, nobody likes a show-off).
What we can't do is work out what to do when we actually start winning. Is it the correct etiquette to bounce up and down on the sofa screaming at the human shaped pixels on the TV set to row/pedal/run/swim faster and leaping in the air with a fist clenched 'YOU EFFING BEAUTY' when we win which is the style i seem to have fallen into this weekend. As the Rebecca Adlington gold medal in the 800m freestyle came at 3.10 am Saturday morning it probably wasn't the most sociable thing to do but if my neighbours still speak to me after my loud drunken renditions of show tunes at midnight on a Saturday night, i am sure they won't mind a bit of top of the lungs cussing every four years.
So there we sit third in the medal table with 11 golds, 6 silvers and 8 bronze although i gave up on Paula Radcliffe and missed the inevitable break down on the Beijing road where she stopped, walked, screamed, cried and posed for photos for the Monday morning newspapers.
Most joyfully we are above the Australians who must be crying into their Vegemite sandwiches this morning. Us British blogger's can start to plan our taunting posts to Australians now.
6 comments:
Dumb question, what is the basis for the rankings in that chart? I see the U.S. has the most medals, but is listed second. You guys are ranked third with 25 while Russia has 30 and is ranked 8th. Is there a formula giving points to Gold, Silver, or Bronze, or is New Math taking over?
I can only guess it is listed by the number of golds but it would make more sense to have 3-gold, 2-silver and 1-bronze but then that would push us down the table so let's not ask too many questions about it.
Congratulations to G.B., Lucy for their current position. Great effort!
However, I wonder what the final result will be? And without Phelps I wonder where the U.S. would be?
Amuses me no end david that if Phelps was a country he would be at least 8th in that table. I don't know how many more medals we are going to get but i don't expect us to be troubling that 3rd place when it all ends.
I do wish our media would stop paying attention to Paula Radcliffe - she really is the antithesis of all the other British medalists in the Olympics... Her modus operandi is well established by now... i.e. Turn up at the games badly prepared and/or injured... enter the race... do badly... pull out and/or stagger over the finishing line, well behind the winners... cry... talk incessantly about that nasty old injury (and about '4 years time')... cry again... cry a bit more... rinse... repeat.
No ticker, that girl.
Whereas the likes of Adlington, Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Ben Ainslie are total stars, and far more deserving of column inches.
A couple of our female rowers are quite fit too.
As for the table, yep, it's simply down to how many gold medals you win. In the event of a tie, the ones with the most silvers gets the nod, and if it's still a tie then it goes down to the bronze.
And this is fair enough, I think. It's all about winning, after all.
As I explain to everyone who I ever beat (at anything): "Second is just the first guy who didn't win". ;-P
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