COMMENT
Is it over yet? Oh God no, not another week of it.
I've been hiding behind the couch for what already seems like a month, trying to avoid the Olympics. And still they drone on like some interminable fourth-form PE class where the sporty types get to show off while the rest of us daydream about never having to spend time with these people again.
There are two things I've never believed about the Olympics. One is that they happen only every four years. The facts may support that they do. But Dixon's Theory of Relativity, the major plank of my quantum television work, proves that stuff you don't want to watch is always on when you switch on the box. Using that assumption, my thesis contends that rather than happening every four years the Olympics are actually screening all the time somewhere in the world and turn up on your TV when you would rather watch anything else but women's hockey.
The other thing I've never believed is that the Olympics rate. Again the facts may support that they do. But if the Olympics are so damn popular, why is it that numbing spectacles such as badminton, weightlifting, cycling and archery aren't screened 24/7 on our terminally ratings-desperate free-to-air networks?
They aren't because people in this country would rather watch rugby, netball, league, soccer, golf and (God help them) motor racing, because these are - for the most part - sports that involve real drama, plenty of action, the occasional punch-up, Tiger Woods, or crashes.
If there was some biffo in badminton, if weightlifters were occasionally crushed and if archery involved live game then maybe, maybe, I could believe that this stuff rates.
Even the so-called glamour events - any swimming race involving an Australian - are utterly devoid of spectacle for those immune to the idea that there is something intrinsically exciting about a group of people trying to get from one end of something to the other. There is nothing to watch. It is simply about who is fastest - just like, say, a cockroach race.
Arguably, there is entertainment value in watching some of the most preposterous sports ever devised. I happened upon water polo this week. It speaks volumes about my ignorance that I didn't know there was such a thing as water polo. But there it was, a titanic struggle between the United States and Hungary, a contest which involved grownups in silly headgear chasing a ball around a pool. I found myself momentarily pining for reality TV.
It hasn't helped that TV One's coverage has so far been of the shotgun variety. Like some attention-deficit afflicted child given the remote, the primetime cover seems to channel-surf, leaping from one event to another every few minutes. You just start to get revved up by the Tall Blacks versus China, then it's off to the equestrian cross-country, then the table tennis.
Another problem - at the time of writing - is that New Zealand's Olympians seem to have achieved nothing but picking the right time to be in Athens, with its 30C-plus temperatures, while the rest of us try not to die like hungry dogs in our new Siberian climate.
God, another week of it. Is it really that surprising that so many of the Olympic venues aren't even half-filled with spectators?
<i>Greg Dixon:</i> Race to escape is a loser's game
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