Ringing in the Olympics

"BARCELOOOOOOOONAAAAAAAAAAAAA...!!!"

The moment that you stepped into the room you took my breath away.

You never forget your first time. Linford Christie surging for the line, arms outstretched, eyeballs blazing. The Dream Team making basketball disciples of all nations. Steve Redgrave heaving himself to within two gold medals of a knighthood. And who can forget that quintessentially Catalan opening ceremony, crowned in a blaze of glory as an archer lit the Olympic cauldron with a flaming arrow (or did he?).

I was 9 years old and had never seen anything quite like it. I now need only hear the opening bars of the above-quoted Freddie Mercury/Montserrat Caballé standard (which inevitably yet masterfully accompanied the BBC’s opening titles) and the goosebumps make their customary appearance.

The 1998 Seoul Games registered somewhere at the back my subconscious (I vaguely remember coverage on in the background as I toddled home from school for lunch). Two years later, the sight of a grown man in a white shirt crying his eyes out on a football pitch, and bringing no end of amusement to the other grown-ups watching the telly, gave me momentary pause as I ran around a Scripture Union family camp up in Plockton. But 1992 was the first time I properly engaged with a major sporting event and so the Olympics (strictly the summer version) have commanded my attention to varying degrees of enthusiasm ever since.

The relationship has not always run smoothly, with the frustrations, if anything, increasing as the years have passed. Am I alone in considering a medal table to be the very antithesis of the Olympic ideal? In addition, an Olympic medal is a mere curio in the cabinet of any successful tennis player, footballer or (from 2016) golfer – both these great sports and the Games themselves are the worse for their inclusion in the programme.

My biggest gripe, however, rests not with the IOC but with certain elements of the British media (The Daily Telegraph is a chief culprit), who seize their four-yearly opportunity to not-so-subtly knock football and its fans with untold relish. A Brit picks up some serious metal in the likes of equestrianism, archery or sailing (among many other sports whose sole reason for inclusion is that the original founders probably indulged in them at weekends on their estates) and all of a sudden we get the customary “what a damning indictment of our nation that this sport doesn’t get the exposure it deserves!” sermon from some corner of middle-England. Well there’s a reason it doesn’t, matey: it’s rubbish.

However, so many have been the moments of sheer, jaw-wiping-off-the-floor, sporting magnificence that these irritations have not quite yet extinguished my continued enthusiasm as London 2012 approaches. Though I understand – nay, anticipate – the customary pessimism from my Caledonian brethren (the Games organisers’ solitary sob to Scots being a quite pathetic football schedule at Hampden Park – Egypt v Belarus, anyone?), it is a source of some regret to me that I won’t be in the UK for surely the only ‘home’ Olympics of my lifetime.

So, inspired by the recent columns on the BBC Sport website by legendary commentator Barry “Just look at his face” Davies, I’ve elected to keep my spirits up by posting a few of my own personal Olympic highlights (illustrated on Facebook of late) right here on this very blog in the build-up to the Games. It’s just that when I say “I was there”, I more often than not refer to a well-worn sofa.