Dialogue: Olympics, what Olympics? Why didn't you tell us?

By PAMELA WADE*

If I had just learned that I'd brought the wrong baby home from the hospital 10 years ago, I would probably be a little more shaken - but not much.

After all, the foundations of belief that have recently taken a tumble were established many years before that, when I was a child myself, peering mystified down through the branches of a tree at the red-faced fathers roaring at their wet and muddy sons as they chased a perversely bouncing ball in the raw chill of a Christchurch winter.

We were never a sporting family. Not for us the long games of beach cricket, knockabouts with racquet and ball, or wild leaps after frisbees. We read books, played Snap and dug holes in the sand.

My father would swot up on the match reports in Monday morning's paper so as not to be ostracised at work, but the rest of us grew up in a world unsullied by the primitive emotions aroused by rugby and other rough games.

Test series, Olympic and Commonwealth games, Wimbledon ... there must have been other sporting events occurring at regular intervals throughout my life, but the whole point is that I can't name them. They simply didn't exist for me.

People would say, "What about the big match, then?" and I would not only not know the score, I had no idea who had been playing whom, or even at which sport.

I had to go to the other side of the world to find one, but I managed to marry a man of similar views.

The sports section of our paper was never unfolded. We were the only household in Britain to get Sky just for the movie channel and CNN. Without the slightest conscious effort, and despite watching television every night, we managed not to see a single moment of the Barcelona Olympics.

So things might have continued, had we not had children and brought them back to New Zealand. At school they were given quizzes requiring them to know not only who the Prime Minister is, but who captains the Black Caps.

They have sat, the whole school together, watching rugby test matches on television. They have been encouraged to play sport themselves - netball, hockey, miniball, tennis. And that was the beginning of the end.

Joining the sideline army of parents was just the first step. Next came the free tickets to the coaches' games, with all the captivating razzmatazz that they entailed. And now there are the Olympics.

There was no chance of escape: we're talking school projects here, jagged holes in the newspaper, rapt attention to that bit of the news before the weather when we'd been accustomed to wander away.

The stockpile of unwatched videos has remained untouched. The television has been on all day, every day, on One.

We have gazed, agog, not only at the gallant efforts of those feisty hockey women, and the impossibly lanky basketball players, but also at alien sports - rowers perched on pencil-thin skiffs, riders bouncing over huge obstacles, spindly gymnasts corkscrewing through the air, glitter in their hair and springs in their ankles.

We have gasped at the menacing bulk of the women weightlifters, marvelled at the dolphin grace of the swimmers, been impressed by the minimalist technology of the runners' outfits, smiled at the flaunted cool of the sprinters in their shades and gold chains.

We have discovered the simple pleasure of sitting comfortably, drink at hand, doing nothing more useful than watching other people sweat and strain - and feeling afterwards that we have spent the time well, that something worthwhile has been achieved.

Now we know what the rest of you have been on about all these years.

You could have told us.

*Pamela Wade is an Auckland writer.

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