Choke is a harsh word, I know, but has any hockey team ever lost from 2-0 up, with four minutes to play? We're not talking air hockey. This is field hockey, with teams of 11 adults, on a full-size field, 90 metres end to end. The ball doesn't get loaded into a rocket-launcher. In four minutes, Germany filmed their own Mighty Ducks sequel - hopeless, merciless - with more sadism than 50 Shades. The bleak moral was that underdogs shouldn't bother chasing their dream. Your hopes will be raised like balloons, only to be popped.
So brutal. The only reason I feel okay mentioning our men's hockey is because I figure they'll never read this - they must still be in a clinic, being treated for PTSD. I'm sure every time they close their eyes, the Germans score another goal. And when they look at the clock, it ticks backward.
Lest we forget, rugby became an Olympic sport this year. What a gift to the Kiwi medal count. Most countries have never heard of rugby. Even fewer countries have seven people who know how to play. Was there ever a sport more made for NZ to dominate? We would own this gold medal the way the USA own basketball. Muhahaha!
Alas. Our sevens men's elimination was clearly a failure by Government. What are we wasting our GDP on? Why were Fiji's sevens team permitted to remain Fijian?? As soon as sevens was named an Olympic sport, our Government should have started importing every up-and-coming Fijian 7s player. Our secret agents needed to identify Fijian assets and turn them. Immigration should have declared a skills shortage, based on sprint times over 25 or 30 metres, and knowing the recipe for kava.
We should've staged dawn raids in Fiji, our immigration staff landing like troops on D-Day, pounding on teenage rugby players' doors, armed with blank passports and unmarked currency. Come to NZ! It's awesome! (Just don't drink the water in Havelock North.)
Yes, we'd have to be careful not to acquire the entire population of Fiji - for fear of affecting our medal ranking per capita - but better safe than sorry.
I took a quick look at the medal table. I'm not saying the Olympics are dodgy, but Russia have won 36 medals, and they weren't even allowed to show up. Did they enter the Olympics by correspondence? Are there KGB agents competing undercover? Russia are somehow 4th on the medal table - deliberately, I imagine, because to be in the top three, while absent, would attract too much attention. Putin's no fool. You can bet that when he annexed Crimea, he targeted the regions that contained Greco-Roman wrestlers.
If only the same could be said for our Government. While our Immigration Department prints visas for hairdressers and chefs - which, as far as I can tell, are not yet Olympic events - they don't seem to be prioritising the medal table. Do they not have Sky? The medal table is proof that the housing crisis isn't caused by immigration from a certain "unwholesome" country, the one with lacklustre, foreigny sign-writing. If Auckland really is New China, where's our medal for table tennis?
