Olympic Highlights VII: Elbow

One of the highlights of the Olympic closing ceremony for me was definitely Elbow. They were also responsible for the theme tune of excellent BBC coverage. Off the back of these things, I have got myself a fair bit of Elbow, including (most recently) First Steps, the aforementioned BBC theme tune and just as good as I remember it. (Better, in fact, as I can now listen to the full 6min 21sec!) The reminder of the Olympics is a bonus!

The other Elbow album that I have been listening to a lot of late is Cast of Thousands which is simply a joyous stroll through mellow musical magnificence and gets better each time I listen to it, particularly the first half of the album. It's definitely headphones music: it deserves your full attention.

Like a fair few of my other music discoveries, this was in-part thanks to my emusic membership: Elbow are one of the decent bands that have albums on the site (including Cast of Thousands). If you want a trial, leave me a comment and I'll send an invite. (It used to get some extra freebies. You have to sign up but you can cancel before paying any money unless they have changed things.)

Putting Greenwich at the centre of the World

If, whilst watching the Equestrian events at Greenwich Park, you wonder how Greenwich got to be home to the Prime Meridian Line - and thereby determine both world time and world longitude - you could do much worse than Episode 91 of A History of the World in 100 Objects, which features the ship's chronometer from HMS Beagle.

It represents technological advancement that didn't get a mention in the opening ceremonies but was arguably much more important than putting men on the moon (as Steve Jones did argue) or robots on Mars. (As undeniably cool as those things are!)

I've been slowly working my way through the episodes of this great series over the past few months - there are a lot of them! - and was particularly pleased to listen to this one yesterday as Darwin and Deep Time both get a mention. (I'd just been updating the MapTime Organic Evolution TimeLine and Keywords.)

So, if you are in London and looking to kill some time between events, download the podcast (or read the transcript) and then visit the British Museum!

Olympic Highlights VI: Lighting the Cauldron

I'm ashamed to say that I was still stuck in cynicism when the Olympic torch was going round the country, so I didn't really pay it much attention. Looking back, I am not really sure why this was. I suspect that it was a combination of not really enjoying the last two Olympics that much and the standard negative press coverage of everything that went wrong in the build-up without really stressing all the good bits. (I wish the media would cheer up sometimes!)

Despite this, we probably would have gone and seen it come through Southampton had it not been raining so hard at the time that we decided to give it a miss. (Although fantastic in the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, watching a collection of umbrellas is not so fun in real life.) Instead, my only real exposure was the torch relay bunting. (After the Royal Wedding, Jubilee and Torch Relay, I am now thinking that we should always have some form of bunting up. It's so cheery!)

By the time David Beckham arrived at the Olympic park with the flame and passed it on to Olympic legend, Sir Steve Redgrave, however, I was well and truly on board. Literally passing the torch to nominated youths as part of the "Inspire a Generation" theme was a really nice touch, I thought.

I enjoyed most of the Opening Ceremony but, for me, the real star of the whole show was the Cauldron. Indeed, as the memory of the event fades, this sense just increases. Like many, I had been slightly confused by the copper "petals" the different countries had been bringing in but when it all became clear and each one was lit, it began to make sense. There was still a slight hesitation in my house - there should be a single flame but then as the individual arms raised and the cauldron assembled, it was a thing of really beauty. (And pretty impressive engineering!)

In general, I enjoyed the Paralympic Opening Ceremony more and the cauldron was just as beautiful the second time. This time it was more like a favourite song that a band saves for the end of the show. We all knew it was coming but wondered when and how it would be delivered. The arrival of the torch into the stadium was perhaps more impressive than the Olympic ceremony - a Royal Marine flying in by zip wire from the tower next to the stadium. Having Britain's first paralympic gold medal winner light the cauldron was very different from the Olympic ceremony but equally special in its own way. As with much of the ceremony, I was impressed.

Both Opening ceremonies had elements celebrating British contributions to science and technology and I think that the Olympic cauldron captured that element perfectly. Well done to Thomas Heatherwick and all involved with making "Betty"!

Olympic Highlghts V: Amazing human feats

It's a bit of a cliche to describe athletic performances as "superhuman" but, let's face it, some of them are just ridiculous. I know some people take issue at the fact that all this money goes into letting a few individuals train for their dream but I see it as comparable to investing in culture and the arts: it might not provide a direct tangible benefit to the economy but I still find it inspirational to see what humans are physically capable of if they push themselves. As the Paralympic events kick off today, I suspect that the biggest inspiration is yet to come.
(Part of me can't help thinking it might be even more entertaining if Greg Rutherford were to actually jump 70 Cadbury's Twirls, though!)

Starting the Paralympics with a Big Bang

Well, I enjoyed the Olympics Opening Ceremony but I think I may have enjoyed the Paralympics opening even more. Kicking off with Steven Hawking introducing the Big Bang and then celebrating science, rationalism and the universal declaration of Human Rights - I was sold. Even the old Higgs boson got a role in proceedings!

Perhaps it was the reduced pressure of knowing that the Olympics had already gone smoothly but the whole thing had a much more relaxed feel to it. (Or perhaps it was just me!)

It really picked up where the Olympics left off: progressive, forward-thinking and a celebration of modern Britain and modern humanity. I also very much liked the umbrella theme, although happily they proved not to be needed. Great stuff. Hard to think of anything bad to say about it, actually. (Happily, I don't intend to!)

It was good to see the Olympic cauldron get lit again too and it was just a beautiful the second time. The arrival into the stadium was perhaps more impressive - a Royal Marine flying in by zip wire from the tower next to the stadium. Having Britain's first paralympic gold medal winner light the cauldron was also a really nice touch, I thought.

Bring on the Games!

Olympic Highlights IV: the Volunteers

It would be wrong to have a set of posts of Olympic Highlights without mentioning the volunteers. I didn't attend any of the events myself but you had to be living in a cave not to see the impact they made. I'm not normally a fan of Alastair Campbell but I think his blog post from earlier in the month sums it up quite nicely: The volunteers are 70000 reasons why these Games are great – and they are changing Britain for the better. They were the embodiment of the multicultural and positive Britain that the Opening Ceremony set the stage for and, it should be pointed out, were not just made up of Brits.

The volunteers deservedly got a special section in the Closing Ceremony. Without them, the Games would not have been so awesome. It was lovely to see how much the athletes themselves appreciated their contribution. That paled next to the crowd's reaction to the mention the volunteers got during Seb Coe's closing speech, though. I have never felt so emotional about a(n apparently) spontaneous standing ovation before. Great stuff.

Olympic Highlights III: the BBC pundits

If there is one slight reservation that I have going into tonight's Opening Ceremony (beyond the possibility of Boris Johnson representing Britain again), it's the fact that Paralympic TV coverage has gone to Channel 4. The BBC did such a good job that it's going to be hard to follow.
It's not just the fact that the coverage itself was awesome, although it was: at various points I was watching events on my iPhone or (on occasion) my computer at work as well as the 3 normal BBC channels and 24 x 24hour HD channels that were broadcasting sports of various kinds. I also warmed to many of the presenters and pundits. (Some annoyed me, it is true, but this is a highlights post!)

For some people, I suspect that Gary Lineker was an odd choice for one of the anchors but I actually thought it was very appropriate in the spirit of sportsmanship and fair play. Here is a man who, despite playing at the very highest level in three countries, maintaining a games:goals ratio of less than 2 at club and country, winning the 1986 World Cup Golden Boot (despite being cheated out of a semi-final place by that goal from Diego Maradona), winning the English Golden Boot three times (for three different clubs) and being the second-highest goalscorer for England of all time, never picked up a yellow or red card. He has his critics (who doesn't) but I thought he did a fine job and even followed him on Twitter for the duration of the Games. (He clearly got a genuine kick out of meeting the athletes and being there to see their achievements. I've stopped following now because it's all back to football and my Twitter feed is full enough already!)

Other notables for me were former jockey Claire Balding, who did a great job for all the equestrian events, John Amaechi covering the basketball, and Ian Thorpe given punditry for the swimming and general Aussie opinion. (In the true "Inspire a Generation" spirit, Ian Thorpe even managed to fit in an impromptu swimming lesson at Tooting Bec Lido before heading back Down Under.) Then, of course, there was Sir Steve Redgrave: Olympic legend and all-round top chap.
The stars of the show (athletes aside!) for me, though, were the Athletics team and, in particular, Michael Johnson. Not only was he the perfect straight-faced foil for the unabashed partisan British exuberance of Denise Lewis (also great) and Colin Jackson but he also seemed to know a lot about the sport. This was a man who had clearly done his homework but not so that he could come out with ridiculously irrelevant statistics like too many commentators; his comments were always informative and interesting.

One situation that particularly stood out for me was the short piece they did on the proverbial question of why black athletes dominate track events. I'm not going to go into the arguments about this here, other than to say that (a) there is a really nice post at Further Thoughts for the Day about this issue and (b) Michael Johnson also presented most the arguments covered in that post. I was impressed, anyway.

Fingers crossed that as the BBC pass on the torch of coverage to Channel 4, the latter are able to match the former's quality of coverage, even if the quantity of coverage escapes them.

Olympic Highlights II: The Royals

I'm something of a closet Royalist. I don't mean that I harbour suspicions regarding the sexual orientation of certain princes - it's none of my business - but rather that I have certain sympathy for the Windsors and think that, all things considered, they do a pretty good job. Until the Olympics came along, the recent Royal events (wedding and jubilee) are the closest we Brits have really got to having a proper national event.

There is also a small part of me that wonders whether we wouldn't be better off reinstating a Monarchy - if we could get rid of the "Divine Rights" aspect, at least. (A secular hereditary oligarchy, maybe?) Anyhoo... I'll save that one for another day.

With the Paralympics looming, this post is meant to be about the Olympics... and another one of the highlights for me was the British Royal family. (Partly, I suspect, because they kept the more embarrassing ones hidden from view!)

First, there was that moment during the Opening Ceremony when everyone turned to their neighbour and said "that's not her is it?" - or something similar. But it was the actual Queen! Sky-diving with James Bond! OK, so not actually sky-diving - and there was a bit of a daylight continuity issue - but, even so, respect to QEII for getting involved and not taking herself too seriously. Along with the torch, I think it was my favourite bit of the ceremony.


As well as the Queen, I was also very impressed with the Princes - particularly Harry. They appeared on the BBC and just seemed like very sensible, well-adjusted, human fellas. I know that Harry has had a bit of a rough time in the press lately - again, none of my business - but I'd be pretty happy to have him or his brother as King. They both seem to have their heads screwed on the right way - which is quite a wonder, all things considered.

I really liked the fact that he was the official Royal representative for the closing ceremony. What's more, having seen Harry's Arctic Heroes, I am also glad to hear that it will be "business as usual" for him at the Paralympics.

Olympic Highlights: Sportsmanship

One of the things that really struck me and impressed me a lot during the Olympics was the high degree of sportsmanship shown by the vast majority of competitors. There were a few exceptions, I know, but generally speaking there was a lot of clear admiration for fellow competitors. I was particularly impressed with the Brits in this respect. Of course, there is a massive ascertainment bias here - they were the vast majority of the athletes that were interviewed on British TV. By that same token, however, they should also have dominated my memories of bad sportsmanship and I don't really remember any. (The closest I can think of is Ben Ainslie getting annoyed at his "accusers".)

A particular stand-out moment that I remember that exemplified this was Tom Daley. His final dive put him in the gold medal position. The next diver to go was David Boudia from the USA. He had a more difficult dive as his last one and, sure enough, he nailed it and moved into gold spot. The camera pans across the audience and there is Tom Daley smiling and clapping with everyone else.

The other moment (among many) that stood out was the end of the Victoria Pendleton / Anna Meares rivalry. Although I missed the final race itself, I have seen some of the pictures and reports afterwards. As the Telegraph reported:

The two track foes embraced after Pendleton lost out in the gold medal contest.

Meares said: "Last night Victoria showed great sportsmanship. It would have been very difficult to have been beaten in front of a home crowd, especially one as patriotic and as loud as that.

"It [the embrace] happened so promptly after she was defeated that it was instant reaction and it showed the high-quality character and person that Victoria is.

I just hope that the over-paid and over-hyped members of this season's Premier League teams were watching and taking notes.

Olympic Fish

Something frivolous for the weekend to help fill the void until the Paralympics start.

Goodbye Olympics. You were awesome.

I have a confession to make. I enjoyed the closing ceremony. It was far from perfect. There were bits I didn't like. There were bits that made me cringe and want to hide behind the sofa. But, on the whole, I remember thinking it was a pretty good spectacle and filled the brief of a celebration with plenty of songs to "sing along too".

Since then, I've seen quite a lot moans and complaints about it. One article, which I won't link to because I don't want to promote it, went as far as describing the ceremony as dangerous because it so explicitly stuck two fingers up at the multicultural celebration of modern Britain that was the Opening Ceremony. Perhaps I am naive but I find it hard to interpret the event with such cynicism. What's more, I don't want to. The Olympics was up-lifting and buoyant and I'm not ready to come down to Earth with a jolt just yet. I don't want to go back to old moany Britain. I want to put on a Union Flag T-shirt and punch the air... metaphorically, at least.

I'm not going to pretend for a moment that the whole show was fantastic. Indeed, there was one moment - when the camera showed Boris Johnson "dad dancing" to the Spice Girls - that made me feel so embarrassed that I exclaimed "Oh no! The last two minutes have undone the whole Olympics!" But, I was joking. (Mostly!) A bit of "Mr Blue Sky" by E.L.O. and the Spice Girls were quickly forgotten. Besides, the Closing Ceremony wasn't for me, it was for everyone. There were probably just as many people watching who love the Spice Girls and don't like Muse as vice versa.

Some of the other choices were a bit odd, it is true. I thought there was something slightly ironic about John Lennon singing "Imagine there's no countries" to the Olympic Games but then, maybe, I'm being too cynical. The song, at the end of the day, is about unity and a "brotherhood of man" - if that's not pro-multicultural, what is? And the giant face was pretty cool too.

I'd also be interested who decided to book Oasis without the talented one. But this was balanced out by the epic guitar solo of Anita Dobson Brian May. Elbow. Madness on the back of truck. Eric Idle (up to the uncomfortable Indian part). Take That (in their best "sans Robbie" configuration). The percussive brilliance of Stomp. Not to mention the wonderfully surreal Annie Lennox riding through the stadium on some kind of weird Gothic warship from the Apocalypse.

For me, though, the real star of the show (apart from the athletes and volunteers, who I will come to in a later post), was the stadium - and the lighting team. Although a bit gimmicky - and probably extravagantly expensive - the "pixels" were actually really cool.

I liked the way the stadium went Green and Gold for the Brazilians following the handover.

And I liked the way it ended up Red, White and Blue.

The bands (good and bad) - and the dancing (good and bad!) - are just memories by the morning but the stadium lives on to remind us that we held the Olympics in 2012 and it was awesome.

The Olympic legacy is what we make of it, not the Closing Ceremony. (Bring on the Paralympics!)

The Olympic Legacy - it's not all about the medals

Last week, the Telegraph website featured what struck me as a particularly vacuous piece of cynical journalism: "£4.6 million - the cost of an British Olympic medal". This piece annoyed me in so many ways, it's hard to know where to start. The essence of the piece - look how much we have spent per medal - is summed up by the title but it's worth having a look at what this cost translates to:

"Great Britain's impressive form at the Olympics follows a massive cash injection after London won its bid to host the Games. UK Sport's funding increased from £70 million for the 2004 Athens Games to £235 million for Beijing.

This year, it has received £264 million, largely from investment through the National Lottery."

I'm not sure about this last figure. There seems to be a bit of journalistic confusion about whether the £264 million is for one year or four years - the context (and comments) implied that it is actually £264 million over four years. A BBC article today, "Funding for Britain's Olympic sports extended to Rio 2016" has some slightly different values:

"Team GB's budget for the last four years was £313m. Providing lottery ticket sales hold up, the Rio pot will be similar."

"The level of funding from the National Lottery will be an estimated £87m per year, with around £40m coming from the Government."

Let's go with the highest value of these - £127 million per year - and put that sum in a bit of perspective.

According to a BBC article in May, "Premier League club wages climb to new highs":

"Total wages across the Premier League rose by £201m (14%), equivalent to more than 80% of the £241m increase in club revenues that season, to give a final salary bill of £1.6bn."

In other words, the total UK Sport's funding is approx. half the increase in revenue of Premier League football clubs and less than 10% of their salary bill. The same article also reports the top wage bills per club:

TOP PREMIER LEAGUE WAGE BILLS 2010-11

☐ Chelsea - £191m (up from £174m in 2009-10)
☐ Manchester City - £174m (£133m)
☐ Manchester United - £153m (£132m)
☐ Liverpool - £135m (£121m)
☐ Arsenal - £124m (£111m)

So, the top 4 clubs spend more on their team wages than UK Sport spends on everything. It doesn't look like quite such bad value for money now, does it?

The other thing, of course, is that the medal tally is surely one of the least important of all the outcomes of sports funding. The motto of the Games is, after all, "Inspire a Generation". As a number of people have pointed out - including previous multi-medal-winner Ian Thorpe, who was a (fantastic) pundit for the BBC - inspiring and encouraging young people to do more sport can be seen as an investment in the health of the nation. Obesity is a big problem in this country (ironically, thanks in part to some of the Olympic sponsors), and it's a no-brainer that a more active lifestyle will help. The Department of Health reports

"a significant burden on the NHS - direct costs caused by obesity are now estimated to be £5.1 billion per year."

And that's just the NHS. In other words, obesity annually costs the UK at least 40 times more than Olympic sports (ignoring the one-off costs of hosting the Games this time, of course).

Coming back to the Telegraph article, I think that one of the crucial things here is that the most inspirational athletes are not always the ones that win the medals. The athlete that comes eighth with a Personal Best and is (rightly) pleased at being eighth best in the world can be far more inspiring that the athlete that gets in a grump at coming second (and winning a medal) because they were expecting to win. Indeed, one thing that has impressed me about TeamGB is that we have had far more of the former that the latter. The pride of athletes like these - and proud family members such the now legendary Bert le Clos - certainly inspire me a lot more than the Usain Bolt's of this world. After all, not everyone can be Usain Bolt, but everyone can do their best and give their all.

Of course, the inspiration generated by sporting success does not stop at sport itself. I count myself among those who have been inspired and seen my cynicism thoroughly quashed - both at the Olympics itself but also the will and ability of Britain to make a good job of it.

In contrast to the Telegraph piece above, one of my favourite Olympics articles so far was an item in the Guardian by Jonathan Freedland, "London 2012: we've glimpsed another kind of Britain, so let's fight for it" captures my own view of the Games quite nicely:

For we got a glimpse of another kind of Britain. A place which succeeds brilliantly, not least by drawing equally on all its talents, black and white, male and female. A place where money and profit are not the only values, exemplified by the 70,000 volunteers who made the Games work and showed the world a smiling face while they were at it. A place that reveres not achievement-free celebrity, but astonishing skill, granite determination and good grace, the land not of TOWIE but of Bradley Wiggins, Nicola Adams and Laura Trott. A place where patriotism is heartfelt, but of the soft and civic rather than naked and aggressive variety; a place that welcomes visitors from abroad and cheers louder for the Turkish woman who came last in a 3,000m steeplechase heat than it did for the winner.

This is the Britain we let ourselves see these past two weeks. It will slip from view as time passes, but we are not condemned to forget it. We don't have to be like the long-ago poet who once wrote: "Did you exist? Or did I dream a dream?"

Well said, Jonathan. I, for one, will try not to forget it.

Olympic Pride - the great BBC!

On a day that is looking like it will result in a possibly unprecedented level of Olympic medal success for "Team GB" (it's amazing that does not grate with me any more!), I thought another post of Olympic Pride was in order. As with my previous Olympics post, this is not about pride in my nation's atheletes, though. Instead, I want to give a hat-tip to the BBC.

The IOC seem to have gone out of their way to commercialise the crap out of the Olympics, which caused a lot of irritation during the build up. It is also obvious from some of the forum comments that I have browsed that this is still a big problem for some people - particularly, I think, for those in America who have to put up with what sounds like awful TV coverage by NBC.

At times like this, I realise just how lucky I am to live in the UK. Not only do we not have any time zone problems (well, except having to work during the day!) but we also have the perfect antidote to IOC commercialisation: the BBC. 24 HD channels of Olympic coverage, subscription free and advert free. Fantastic stuff! Actually, it's really more than this as the 24 HD channels are in addition to the normal BBC channels.

Possibly for this reason, I am enjoying this Olympics a lot more that the last two. Beijing always seemed very distant and there is definitely something to be said for sport being live. I know that, in theory, highlights should be more exciting as they are edited to show you the more exciting bits but, for some reason, it never seems to work out that way (for me) for Olympic events. (Except maybe the football and hockey.) I think it is the drama of seeing the underdogs and the atheletes who get personal bests and are pleased with sixth place. In 2004, I was in Australia during the games, which meant that not only was there a time zone issue but the TV stations I had access to were only showing events featuring Australians. For these reasons, I am definitely enjoying the Games much more this time around.

The other factor, I think, is Twitter. Not only has monitoring Twitter allowed me to enjoy the Nerdlympics but it also turns out to be a great way of catching up with the excitement of the day's events. Because people (and BBC Sport) tweet things as they happen, you can really capture a sense of the excitement, even if you are catching up with events a few hours later due to chores such as having to go to work during the day. Dara O'Briain's discovery of volleyball has also been fun to see develop!

As an added bonus, due to the childish nature of my sense of humour - and the necessary brevity of tweets - the BBC Sport feed sometimes throws up some mental images that make me smile. Favourites so far are references to Rebecca Adlington starting defence of her "800m Olympic crown” (that's a big crown!) and, more recently (and disturbingly):

"Watch South Korea's Ki Bo Bae take women's individual archery gold in a dramatic sudden death shoot-out."

Are they allowed to do that?! It certainly would be dramatic!

So, well done BBC (and Dara O'Briain) and keep up the good work! Another tweet has just alerted me to how good the BBC Sport app is, so I'm off to check that out now!

From the ancient Greeks to the modern Geeks - the #Nerdlympics

This weekend I joined with people from all over the world to witness Olympic history in the making. It was a pleasure to see science and technology celebrated on the world stage and pay a wonderful tribute to the creation of the World Wide Web.

No, I am not talking about the opening ceremony (although I did very much like the cauldron). I am, of course, referring to the #Nerdlympics on Twitter!

I've been on Twitter for a while now and contribute to a couple of trending topics but never got in on one at the beginning and watch it take off before.

Perhaps ironically, I had not really checked my Twitter feed for a while when I logged on last night, Alex Wild (@Myrmecos) had just posted a couple of geeky Olympic event puns with the hashtag #Nerdlympics. ("Star Trek and Field" was one of the early ones.) Never one to resist a good pun (as readers of The Cabbages of Doom could testify!), I tweeted "PCRchery" back (an event to be held in the velodrome with the rest of the thermal cycling). There were then a trickle of tweets, including some of my own contributions:

☺"Modem pentathlon"
☺"Circadian Rhythym Gymnastics" and
☺"Geeko-Roman Wrestling".

A couple of my favourites were tweeted at this time, including:

☺"Periodic table tennis" (@Myrmecos),
☺"Kreb's Cycling" (also @Myrmecos),
☺"Higgs Field Hockey" (@paulcoxon) and
☺<table>Tennis</table> (@gr33ndata).

Then, it suddenly took off and tweets were flying in, causing Alex to tweet:

The good news is, I've finally created my first successful hashtag. The bad news is, it's #Nerdlympics

As I replied at the time - I don't see the bad news here! Top work, Alex - you gave many nerds (including me) an entertaining evening.

It was quite interesting to see the different approaches taken. I was definitely of the "pun" class but there was a clear set of proposed events from an actual Nerdlympic competition. (Alex himself posted both types, e.g. "Synchronized Centrifuging".) At this point it became hard to keep up but here are a few more of my favourites (in no particular order):

☺@artologica: Tenure Track and Field,
☺@SuzeMarsupial: Basketball Galactica
☺@RalphCipolla: Heavy Water Polo
‏☺@skepticCanary: Petri Discus.
☺@CarolMorton: Beach bucky ball
☺@eric_andersen: Angry Birdminton
☺@abdelrahmanG: Spammer throw
‏☺@scientelle: Logarithmic Gymnastics
☺@marvel_matt: TATA-Boxing
☺@JamieBeach: Floppy Discus Throw
☺@JoeyMcMorrow1: Molecular weight lifting

Well done, all! It made me proud to be a nerd.

I am sure that there were some other classics that I have missed. To get a few more, try searching Twitter for #Nerdlympics - the early posts are all events but then later posts start referring to summaries of the event (recursive trending?) - or check out the Storify summaries by Bug Girl and Tarek Amr.