I feel forced to abandon my summer break from blogging to reflect on the Olympics 2016.
In reality, I've just been turned down for a Heritage Lottery Fund grant for a new pop up museum. 'Pop up' museums are all the rage, although I can't think of anything worse than sitting in a bus station waving my weird objects at people waiting for the no. 9 bus to Old Sodbury. It needed reinventing before we're all forced to do it.
My idea was 'The Summer of Fun Pop Up Chateau of Unreason Museum'. In return for a modest capital investment from the public purse to purchase a modest pile in Provence, I would pop up for two weeks to make our museum international and develop an entirely new audience. In order to build on this, I would return every year, to cement relations in the bars and restaurants of Arles and Avignon. Sadly, as usual, I am a man ahead of my time and others do not see the visionary potential of the idea.
So I find myself in this country watching the TV through the night. A habit that usually costs me a lot of money after ten minutes of free viewing. But entirely for free I have been watching the Olympics with increasing incredulity as 'Team GB' hoover up the medals in the sports that the U.S.A. think are a bit gay and so do not try too hard to win.
As an aside 'Team GB' is an appropriate name, rather than 'Team UK' (and the Isle of Man and other Crown Dependencies etc.). The most obvious exclusive nature of the 'GB' moniker is to ignore Northern Ireland. Mind you, the idea of a 'Force UK' team would give sponsors second thoughts about associating their brands with FUK (French Connection excepted). Those complainers about 'Team GB' have missed the point. The Northern Irish athletes under the Anglo-Irish Agreement can compete for the Irish Republic - which most choose to do. So a more obvious question to me, is to ask 'Team Ireland' why they are not 'Team Ireland and a bit of the UK' or Team I and NI (TINI) which incidentally matches their medal haul.
This is not to be boastful about GB's success, I am in fact rather depressed about it. I long for the days in my youth, when I had more thumbs than we had gold medals (Pub Quiz Question - who won the only GB Gold medal at Atlanta 1996?*) - it was proportional, it was more suited to our character, and most importantly it allowed the BBC to actually show some sport.
Having watched a lot of the Olympics now. I have seen a lot of GB athletes wandering around in track suits, rather than seeing sport. I've seen a lot of sweaty GB athletes being asked how they feel, rather than seeing sport. I've seen a lot of inspirational profiles of GB athletes, rather than seeing sport. I've seen a lot of interviews with families of GB athletes, rather than seeing sport. I've actually watched some sport where the commentators seem to have forgotten that there are other athletes on the track at the same time as the GB athlete. In case we missed it I then get a repeat where the camera just focusses on the GB athlete so that we can actually pretend there were no other athletes actually present. I have seen endless repeats of all of the above, and I have then seen the news and highlights that only involved GB medal events. Complete ignoring of women's 200m. in news and highlights was a bit of a low.
So lets get back to athletic incompetence and rediscover the Olympics as a celebration of great athletic performance rather than national triumphalism (leave that to the U.S.A. they do that so much better than us and is more in line with their character).
Simple minded analysts have put the success down to lottery funding. £350m. of investment over the last four years for 50 medals to date is obviously money well spent. Isn't it? Well in terms of success per capita it is not. We get a medal for every 1.2m people. Yet Grenada get a medal for every 100,000. Grenada has no lottery, or major public funding and no obesity in the young crisis. Although India has a medal for every 1.3bn. people. If it ever gets its act together, or if Kabaddi is allowed into the Olympics, even China would need to watch out. If we were as successful as Grenada we would have to actually add new games to Olympics to win enough medals. By the way why is golf in the Olympics and squash and kabaddi are not?
Incidentally Grenada is also the most successful country by GDP. GB languishes in 30th place. India is also bottom of this league table.
OK, having made the case that GB is wasting public money, destroying the spirit of the Olympics and underperforming - the question is why are we so successful?
Athletes are quick to thank support teams, nutritionists and coaches. They go into holding camps in Soviet style luxury gulags and boost national confidence and international profile - just like East Germany in the Cold War. Obviously Team GB doesn't use performance enhancing drugs (they just accidentally miss the drug tests), although they do have a secret drug weapon that is quintessentially British - see later.
I checked what Team GB have taken with them to Rio. Where some of that £350m. has been spent.
Naturally a mere 48,000 pieces of kit have been taken (have you noticed that each GB athlete has almost bespoke kit). However that is reasonable, although supplying your own kit would makes the prospect of someone lining up in the 100m. sprint final in a pair of flipflops rather enticing.
The kit does not include footwear and socks (11,000 pairs) or hats. Hats? We have taken 1,500. That seems a lot given that the total of competitors and staff is only 833. Is this wasteful? One hat per head seems reasonable, but one hat per 1.9 heads seems extravagant.
Again this figure does not include the ceremonial suits and the 2,800 luggage bags to carry all this.
Yet 22 shipping containers were needed. I have a lot of socks, but I only need one drawer. What else have they taken? In here lies the secret of GB success.
Team GB has taken 249 sofas and 350 cushions, 72 sets of outdoor garden furniture, 121 kettles and 5,500 tea bags.
There it is!
Sat on the sofa with a cup of tea...and when it isn't raining sitting on the patio..with another cup of tea. The quintessentially British training regime and drug of choice. A government endorsed mass doping system (which other countries have been banned for) underpinned by professional sitting. Which sports are we good at? Rowing, sailing, cycling and horse riding - sitting sports.
So there you have it. GB has discovered sports that match the British lifestyle, so that we are all in training whether we like it or not, and fuelled it with a drug that is not yet on the Olympic banned list (Linford Christie's ginseng tea excepted - had he opted for PG Tips none of that unpleasantness would have occurred).
So is £350m. well spent? Brits spend £6.3bn. on hot drinks (although I admit some of that involves unnecessarily radical coffee drinking) then yes it is.
Spread the word, the most important measure of success for 'Team GB' is the most important statistic of the Olympics.
1 medal for every 100 cups of tea
This could be the secret of india's rise up the medal table when they realise this.
My rigorous viewing so far has raised my tea drinking to almost Olympic standard - I believe I am already there on my sofa training so I might still dream of going to Tokyo in 2020.
RIO 2016 A NEW WORLD
*clue - it involved a couple of blokes (who incidentally I once saw in a McDonalds) sitting down and going backwards faster than anyone else.
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