POSTED: October 6th 2010

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NEIL WILSON: Opening ceremony a no-go zone for medal hopefuls

THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An exclusive, authoritative series from Sports Features Communications

LONDON, Oct 04: Christine Ohuruogu is not alone.  I also failed a fitness test for Delhi. A run going back to Brisbane in 1982 is broken finally. Doc thought it unwise to chance a kidney stone flaring up abroad, Delhi or wherever.

Would love to have been there. The opening ceremony looked rather better organised than the accommodation. Not that I would have gone to it. Tickets are limited among the media and I always felt those who had never been to be the more deserving.

Opening ceremonies are all of a kind. You know what you are going to get, a country’s presentation of what it wants the world to think of it. Made for television and the ego-polishing of dignitaries, sporting and otherwise.

Games are for sport, and sport has enough theatre of its own. The serious-minded sportsmen and women, intent on the singular purpose of winning, do not waste their time on the amateur dramatics.

Daley Thompson turned down the chance to carry Britain’s flag in 1984, and rightly so. It was not why he was in Los Angeles. Leave it to the non-competing officials, as Britain had to under pressure from its government in Moscow when the British Olympic Association general secretary carried the flag alone.

Endurance parade

Few watching at home realise the endurance needed to be paraded at an opening ceremony. Dressing up in clothes that will never be worn again, bussed to a holding facility walking distance from the stadium and left there for up to two hours.

Then lined up like military and marched in blistering heat - or, perhaps in London, pouring rain - in alphabetical order, so the poor mugs of Wales get to wait longest. Good practice for Britain’s role in 2012 when, as hosts, they will be at the back.

Then you stand in the middle, perhaps in high humidity like Delhi, before the long march out, the buses back to the athletes’ village and you have exhausted probably eight hours of the day. You’re utterly spent, your feet are hot from being enclosed in shoes you’ve never worn before and you haven’t eaten in so long your blood sugar level has gone to hell.

Leaving party

No coach in his right mind would let his athlete go to an opening ceremony. Not one expecting them to win a medal in the first few days. Opening ceremonies should be a no-go area for the competitors. Closing ceremonies should be for them, a leaving party when the real business is done.

So I’ll miss the sport over the coming days but, like the multitude who left so many seats empty on Sunday in Delhi, I am not sorry to have missed another opening ceremony.

NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books     
      
       
      
 

Keywords · Neil Wilson · Commonwealth Games · Delhi

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