Anne Perkins
There’s nothing like a national conversation with a strict time limit. For two weeks of the Olympics, everyone talks knowledgeably about sports they’ve only just heard of. Entirely fact-free opinions are legitimised, and unlike, say, any mention of the Labour leadership, it does not end in tears.
The Olympics has almost fallen to the monsters of marginal advantage, so professional that the life’s been knocked right out of them. They don’t keep me up at night. Not that I disapprove of winning. I’m as easily lulled as the next person into basking in five minutes of reflected national glory. But the moments of jeopardy are more fun.
But Rio’s greatest three minutes was an interview RTE did with the O’Donovans, Gary and Paul, Ireland’s first ever rowing medallists. It was a joy to hear the two of them saying the craic was great, they’d enjoyed putting on the podium pants, but all the same they were almost sorry they weren’t home in Skibbereen with their mates. Then they said they’d had nothing to eat since bread and nutella two hours before the race and they were looking forward to a pizza. That’s my kind of Olympic spirit.
Suzanne Moore
In total I reckon I’ve watched about 15 minutes of the Olympics, and that’s been on YouTube. I just don’t do sports.
I will watch boxing and tennis. All else leaves me cold. If it’s been on TV I have to turn the sound down – not just because of the banal sexism of the commentators, but for the inane prattle in general, the continual repetition of the bleedin’ obvious. My cat could do better.
And yet the whole thing has been a lovely bit of uplift. The winners seem so thrilled and humble and lovely, and you would have to be completely devoid of feeling not to share in their happiness.
It’s sad, though, that they have to wear the dreadful outfits. Sometimes, too, what may be exciting to participate in just doesn’t make good telly. Cycling, for instance? They just look like a load of weird insects trapped in a wooden box. It makes me feel quite claustrophobic.
Matthew d’Ancona
It is a melancholy truth that every public good can be reduced to a financial statistic: every ambulance call-out and delivery to hospital costs about £255; the state spends £34,440 to educate each secondary school pupil; annual maintenance of roads costs upward of £9,000 a kilometre.
On Monday, the Guardian reported that the price of each medal at the Rio Olympics thus far had been £5.5m. Posed so starkly, the price tag smacked of venality. So why am I still smiling? Because, more even than the London Games, these Olympics have cemented Britain’s position as a first-rank sporting nation. Sporting excellence requires subsidy and patronage. How could it be otherwise? We can rail against this simple reality in ascetic fury, or join in the revelry.
Since Orwell described international sport as “mimic warfare” and “war minus the shooting”, it has been commonplace to dismiss the Olympics as a petri dish of nationalism. But Orwell’s The Sporting Spirit was published in 1945 when the gap between patriotism and nationalism still seemed dangerously narrow. In 2016, we can surely draw a distinction between the two.
Our extraordinary athletes exemplify the diversity of their home nation, and a spirit of grace in victory. They send back reports from the very borders of human potential. If that’s not the best of British, what is?
Nosheen Iqbal
As suspensions of reality go, I’d rate going to this year’s Olympics opening ceremony very highly. We should, I was convinced for about four hours in what already feels like forever ago, all just carry on like this every day. All that mad spectacle, the rousing celebration of human endeavour, Gisele walking for a really long time across an empty arena … what better way to get really excited about peaceful co-existence and athletes doing stuff?
And so, because I had the surreal fortune to be in Rio, at the Maracanã, casually getting something in my eye when the refugee team walked into the stadium that first night, I assumed this OIympics would be my Olympics. The one where I’d really get into the dressage (quite compelling, actually) and understand the point of rugby.
I came back to London five days later swearing I was touched by the Olympian spirit – I was finally going to learn how to swim! – and prepared to lose hours championing the underdogs of field hockey. As it turns out, my attention span isn’t what it used to be. Those breathtaking feats of the human body have already become white noise. I’ve not actually been watching Rio 2016 so much as absorbing it through WhatsApp chat and live blog feeds. No medals for endurance on my part. But I’m going to be champion at getting sappy over the closing ceremony.
Zoe Williams
The retrospect of Rio makes me realise how weird London was, to be possessed by that furious jingoism and never really waking up; in a way, 2016 is like waking up from a bender that went on so long I didn’t even realise how drunk I was. I remember this sick-making, skin-pricking fury, sitting next to an American journalist who was cheering after Victoria Pendleton had to cede gold to that Australian bruiser who squeezed her out of her lane.
I have lost my patriotic fervour, and now mainly see the British cyclists as superb through some combination of talent born not made, incredibly hard work, a sublime intelligence at both the level of the muscle and the mind; and not because they are British and understand at some cellular, interconnected level why bulldogs are cute and the NHS is great and bikes matter.
In the absence of obnoxious national pride, I now mainly enjoy the sports in which the difference between being the best in the world and being completely rubbish are naked to the untrained eye. There you are, watching judo. One minute they’re just poking each other. The next, one has a hundred points and the other is crying. Rhythmic gymnastics is particularly piquant for this. Sometimes you can’t tell for hours whether the tears are joy or loss. I love the things that don’t look that hard - archery, the 50km walk – and things that look superhuman.
