Club Olympics
Jeffrey Bernard
The only light relief I've had from the Olympic Games on television has been watching other people watching the wretched business. I say wretched since I'm up to here with sport and I suppose you realise, don't you, that the football season and therefore Match of the Day will be with us in hardly any time at all ? Anyway, for instant expertise I've never seen anything to top recent television audiences. Someone's only got to see three high dives and after the fourth, in which some 'waif-like Russian girl leaves the board backwards and then does three and a half somersaults, a loop-the-loop, goes into a spin, gets out of it and then hits the water without making it ripple, you hear them say, 'Oh no. No, that won't do.' You, or that's to say me, getting slightly tetchy say, 'What do you mean it won't do ?Well, didn't you see her left ankle?' What about her left ankle?' 'It was crooked at her point of entry.'
Suddenly this idiot who should be in his horrid little advertising -agency but who's sitting there in a seedy club with you watching the box knows it all. He's C. B. Fry, Vladimir Kuts, Jack Dempsey and Jesse Owens rolled into one. Which, of course, is what David Coleman iS. But he really is. It's the rest of the world that's mad, not Coleman. But I was talking about this new breed of sporting experts that's sprung up. You must have noticed that this country is now positively crawling with professors of gymnastics. Hence the remarks after the exercises on the bars, performed I'm beginning to believe by the same waif, quickly shoved under a hair dryer by ruthless Russian coaches, who did the diving and running etc, etc. The little, flat-chested wonder has just leapt to the mat having completed a set of exercises well beyond the capabilities of any resident in the London Zoo and the agency idiot, now on his sixth gin and tonic, sighs knowingly and says, 'Well, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that at all.' How d'you know, you twit ?' I ask, now on my sixth something or other. 'Look, old boy, every movement was utterly decisive, she was in complete command all the time. All she's got to do now is hope the Latvian schoolgirl can't catch her up by doing her new double, three-quarter, spreadeagle, backflip, cross-legged dismount.'
One is further annoyed by this expert because he was just the sort of idiot who was making daisy chains at deep long leg while I was bowling my guts out from the vegetable garden end thirty years ago. At this point we leave the Olympics and go over to Headingley where Tony Greig is on the verge of hitting a century against the West Indians. Yesterday, the same agency man was saying, 'Well, you see, they should never have picked Greig, let alone made him captain. I mean he just hasn't got the temperament, let alone the all-round technical ability to be a Test class batsman.' The BBC commentary team waffle away with Laker dropping the g's as ever from the ends of his words and with Benaud sounding bored and with Arlott sounding like a farmer who's stumbled across a cellar full of Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1937, and still the expert from the agency goes On. 'There's only one way to play this fast stuff. Get in line with the ball and play forward.'
We now go back to the Olympics for a spell in the swimming pool and this, for me, is the most boring of all sporting events. Mind you, I'm prejudiced. Not being able to swim more than five yards and being paralytically frightened of the water—the result of Gemini with the sun in Gemini, a lady copywriter on the next bar stool tells me—I wouldn't give you tuppence to see Mark Spitz walk on water. I see an enormous amount of splashing and hear people screaming over the satellite about 'lanes four and six', but there it is, all I can see is foam and bubbles. The agency man though -has got it taped. 'You see the thing about these Americans and, to a lesser estent the Australians of eight years ago, is that they're utterly at home in the water.' 'Utterly?' 'Well, alright. Completely. They're at one with the element itself.' What bloody commercial d'you think you're writing now, you prick ?' I inquire of him. While I am debating whether or not to get off my stool via a double backward somersault and then hit him with the old favourite combination of a left hook to the chin followed by a right cross to his other chin we are saved by a return to Headingley.
'It's a great shame,' says the agency man, 'that Knott has completely lost his nerve. He simply can't cope with this quick stuff.' A minute later, Knott hooks Holder twice with successive balls for four runs each time. 'Of course, I'm not saying he isn't a lucky player, but the old sparkle's gone.' Knott is then out, caught trying to do it again and I say. 'I thought you said he was lucky, you great burkef By now I am contemplating a handspring and a hop, skip and jump to reach a bottle with which to hit the agency man over the head. Luckily, however, we are disconcerted to the point of near-riot by the lady copywriter, an abrasive Canadian with a penchant for brandy mixed with creme de menthe, who suddenly pipes up with, 'For just how long have you English made a study and fine art of losing?' National pride leaps to my breast, the one covered with incredible pectorals, and I murmur something about past Olympics and bandy names like Terry Spinks, Dick MeTaggart and David Hemery. The agency man mentions Agincourt and the fact that we won a gold medal in Mexico for clay pigeon shooting. 'Clay pigeons?' she sneers. 'You mean you're frightened of real ones ?'
At this point it becomes almost impossible to follow the television since an illness called pandemonium breaks out. I am trying to hit the agency man, but a swimming expert is in the way, while the agency man is exhorting Snow to bowl a straighter line. A glass of red wine, previously resting on the top of the set, has been knocked over and has distorted the picture. Another agency man hitherto unconscious, has woken UP and is awarding me 7.5, 7.5, 6.8 and 7.6 for my attack on his colleague. So it hasn't exactly been a totally uninteresting Olympic session for me, just a slightly confused one. During the games, the proprietor of the club has remained on her corner bar stool completely motionless. At one point I thought she might have snuffed it, but she came to during the finals of the high diving and muttered a few well-chosen expletives expressing her opinion of her members. But the strain has been much too much for me and I can't cope with television any more. From now on I'll stick to racing. Going skint is so much quieter an occupation.
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