OPINION:
Isn't this dreadful weather we're having! Mad storms, crazy winds, insane rains! All we can do is to stay sane and stay inside, keep warm, have a bag of potato chips with sour cream and chives dip at hand, and provide really expert analysis of high-quality performance at the
Tokyo Olympics.
It's not easy being an armchair critic. Sometimes you have to get out of your armchair. You might miss something. The tension is generally kind of bearable and yet it makes you realise that like life itself, Olympic sports are often long, exhausting, and seldom any fun – but you never know when something might happen. Velodrome cycling is very boring indeed and yet who will ever forget that sensational moment on Monday when an Australian fell off his bike. The handlebars snapped. He went flying. Sometimes it's only when something goes wrong that we know we are truly alive, and better off watching someone come off their bike at speed than experience it, especially if they're an Australian.
It doesn't take long to become an expert analyst of sports that you might hitherto never have shown the slightest bit of interest in. All across the nation, New Zealanders are forming shrewd opinions of things like beach volleyball. America played Cuba on Monday. The American bikinis were blue and the Cuban bikinis were red. Those red ones go fast, and anyone who watched could see that the Cubans had more speed and grace than their American opponents, who were left clawing at sand time and time again, swiping where the ball wasn't, digging holes with their hands and probably wanting to disappear inside them.
Gymnastics and diving are made for slow motion. The shot-put and discus, less so; spheres in flight don't really have a lot of character. But it's been incredible to watch the tumble and swoop of gymnasts in flight, the toss and turn of divers in the air. Both sports exist because of bars and boards, but the bars and boards are mere surfaces. The glory is all aerial. People flying, without wings or shoes, making gravity look like an idea whose time has passed.