25 August 2016
The Olympics
A Recipe for Success
by Don Urquhart
I cannot envisage a situation where I could present my physical being as aesthetically pleasing, even taking account of the eye of the beholder thing.
Years ago I was on a sales mission to Toronto and had bonded with some clients over a few beers. Hughie, a gnarled little Scotsman, had somehow convinced me to visit his mother and loitering on the balcony of her tenement walkway it suddenly struck me that I was going to miss my plane back. A very considerate Hughie had promised to drive me to the airport in good time but I was just sober enough to realise that he would be too drunk to find his car. So we took our fond farewells and I flagged down a cab, staggering onto the plane just as it was leaving. They had to reopen the door to let me in and they seated me among a group of young people who all moved with perfect grace and spoke beautifully. I had been looking forward to an action movie but the steward’s voice over the tannoy told us that the airline was very pleased to have on board the Royal Canadian Ballet and in their honour they would be showing some tedious film about ballet. All was now clear. I had stumbled among a coterie of beautiful people where I stuck out like a dog’s gonads. They were a different breed in every respect – accomplishment, grace, taste, dress, looks, and discipline. It was a great relief to me to stumble off the plane to join the grubby dishevelled multitude where I fitted in so well.
Being a sucker for most sports, I happily channel surfed the Rio Olympic Games. Then something happened that recalled my Canadian trauma.
There on my TV was a phalanx of 8 goddesses striding in perfect echelon to the deep end of a swimming pool. They wore colourful swimming costumes, sprayed on faces and artificial flowers in their hair. The way they marched with chins thrust forward assertively was reminiscent of a military parade in Red Square. This happened to be the Egyptian team. I wonder what the Muslim Brotherhood made of this display for which the least appropriate adjective would be “modest”. They halted at the side of the pool, performed some tastefully coordinated moves, posed fetchingly for a while then dived in. It soon became clear that these were magnificently fit and disciplined athletes. There were eight teams, all of whom followed a similar start and end ritual, the latter consisting of lining up opposite the judges and registering delight at whatever marks were awarded. Russia won the synchronised swimming gold, as they always do.
My admiration for these ladies is boundless but I find them weird, in the same way that I find good horror movies unsettling. Mars Attacks! has a grotesque alien emerging from the body of a voluptuous woman. Nothing like that here but these wonderful athletes had spent an unconscionable amount of time adorning themselves in a stylised unnatural way, practising a quasi-military entry to the arena, before delivering a massively impressive physical and aesthetic performance.
We don’t appear to do synchronised swimming but the GB team’s triumphs have been largely attributed to the teamwork and organisation behind the medallists. So is the recipe for sporting success lottery-funded subordination of individuality to team discipline? It used to be about Chariots of Fire, Tough of the Track and Wilson the Wonder Athlete. Is it goodbye to all that?
Not entirely, for out of the mist emerges an old school gold medallist boasting a hip replacement and features reminiscent of my old pal Hughie.
Bless you Nick Skelton!
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