And so to the giant countdown clock. Wednesday marks 100 days until the opening of the Olympic Games in Rio, it’s nearly time for the traditional flurry of excitement that accompanies a really quite arbitrary moment in anyone’s calendar. Three-and-one-third months to go, whoop whoop! Sure, we can’t Sky Plus the events yet; we can’t remember whether this is the one with golf, or squash, or women’s football. But come Tuesday we’ll definitely carve out a tight five at the tea-point to talk about whether we’d want to risk zika, all things considered, and doesn’t it look like it’s all going to be a bit of a disaster anyway?
It certainly doesn’t look good. Next weekend’s test event at the velodrome was cancelled because there literally wasn’t a track for the cyclists to race on. I know they say that a bad dress rehearsal makes for a good performance, but that’s taking the notion to some pretty major extremes.
Half the tickets remain unsold, which has got to make Rihanna feel pretty good about herself. Oh, and the president of the host nation may be about to be impeached. Let’s hope that the scriptwriters of Brazil’s version of Twenty Twelve have had plenty of time to work in all the new storylines.
It’s easy to be sceptical, sitting here with our “I heart 2012” mugs and our souvenir lanyards, promenading around our royally monikered reclaimed wasteland, splashing about in our beautiful, municipally owned 50m swimming pool. It’s easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to feel like London 2012 was the acme of all Olympic and Paralympic summers, a British victory to stand alongside Blenheim and Waterloo. Pity the poor sods who have to follow that.
It also requires a bit of squinting when you look back in time. We seem to have forgotten that, with 100 days to go, many of us (well, me at the very least) were still feeling a bit queasy at the prospect of a giant global circus descending on our city and snarling up our beloved transport system. We winced at the price tag we’d been quoted for the Games – a cool £9.3bn – and we really weren’t sure about those special lanes for Olympic officials.
In fact, with 100 days to go, a lot of London’s preparations were looking as lame and desperate as anything Ian “It’s all good” Fletcher – head of deliverance at the Olympic Deliverance Commission – had magicked up with Siobhan “Holy shet” Sharpe in the spoof version. This time four years ago, Lord Coe was planting a “legacy” tree at Kew Gardens, in unremitting rain and fog, while the Red Arrows made a damp flypast over a set of Olympic Rings made of pansies. The same day, the Games logo – “inspire a generation” – was launched to the sound of a different generation making fake vomiting noises.
We forget, don’t we, that this is all part of the drill? That cynicism and overkill are as much part of the Olympiad cycle as the flag handover. The 100-days routine is a stocktaking of every potential disaster, be it terrorist targeting, or matches taking place to empty stadiums, or being left, years later, with The Monorail To Nowhere. Of course, some of them actually happen.
That’s why some of our happiest memories of the London Games are the smiling, courteous armed forces who checked our bags on the way into the venues. Thanks for the incompetence,G4S!
There are plenty of bad things that we can say, for sure, will happen at Rio this summer: with all the corruption stories, it’s been an especially bad year for the image of Big Sport, and it’s right to prepare ourselves. Athletes will get caught doping. People in power will do things that annoy and outrage us. We’ll get absolutely sick of Vinicius, the 2016 mascot.
But there’s something else that will definitely happen, too. About 24 hours in, someone from your country will win a gold medal, and you’ll get excited, and before you know it you’ll be sucked into the back stories of dozens of different athletes you’d never heard of before, and suddenly find yourself as emotionally invested in the outcome of their judo bout/sculling race/T44 100m qualifier as you were at the birth of your own child.
This is what the Olympics and the Paralympics do to us, and you know it’s coming for you. So why not just get in early? Demonstrate your love of sport, and the people who do it, by setting aside the eye-rolls. Be that person who gives a damn about selection trials. Pick a side in the Louis Smith v Max Whitlock debate. Know the name of the guy who’s travelling further on his blades than the able-bodied long jumpers (it’s Markus Rehm). I’ve decided I’m going to.
International sport’s a cynical enough place right now, but maybe we can love it back to life.
