Saturday 04 July

BLOGS

blogCategory
Previous
Back to blog
Next

The Best...Olympic moment

Athlete Ben Johnson
  • Posted at 12:10pm
  • 30 July 2008
  • by PaulJones-RT
  • 4 comments

One of the great things about the Olympic Games is the sheer diversity of sport you get to see. From BMX to baseball, Greco-Roman wrestling to windsurfing, a whole host of weird and wonderful obscurities will be there. And I'll be watching pretty much all of them.

I've always enjoyed the niche sports. I become strangely addicted to muscular munchkins lifting ridiculous weights. Repetitive target sports like archery and pistol shooting always hit the spot too. And during the 2002 Winter Olympics I was watching late-night curling highlights before the British ladies looked like title prospects.

But my favourite ever Olympic moment is a little more mainstream than that.

The men's 100m final is the flagship event of the athletics programme, if not the Olympic Games themselves, and it's hugely dramatic. Compressing four years of intense preparation into a ten-second event creates extreme pressure. Pumped full of adrenalin, the athletes pace restlessly in their lanes or focus intently on the stretch of track ahead of them. And during the build-up, the commentators do their bit to crank up the tension too (they have to make the most of it since meaningful commentary is virtually impossible during the race itself).

Add to this volatile mix a couple of false starts and, by the final crack of the pistol, there's a very real danger you'll find yourself leaping from your sofa and colliding headfirst with your TV set.

During the 1988 Olympics in Seoul I had particular reason to be excited. At the age of 14 my sporting hero was sprinter Ben Johnson, a scary-eyed bull of a runner from Canada. He was the first serious challenger to gracile American Carl Lewis, who, rather selfishly, had dominated both the 100m and the long jump for years. He needed taking down a peg or two.

With the Games being held in South Korea, the race was run in the early hours of the morning, so I couldn't see it live. But I was determined to watch it before hearing the outcome so I was relying on our video recorder, a clanking tank of a machine with a rather haphazard timer. When I ran downstairs in my pyjamas at 7am I was doubly nervous. Had Johnson done his job? Had the video recorder done its?

I needn't have worried on either count. The video did its thing and Johnson tore the rest of the field to shreds, beating Lewis by over a metre and smashing the American's world record. I was ecstatic. Nearly as pumped as Johnson himself, in fact.

Two days later, we discovered there had been more than adrenalin coursing through Johnson's veins that evening. He'd tested positive for banned anabolic steroid stanozolol and ended up suffering the same fate as the drug.

It was a shame the story ended that way but it doesn't change the thrill I get every time I see that race, or the nostalgia I feel when I remember the first time I watched it.

This summer, in Beijing, America's Tyson Gay is set to line up alongside Jamaicans Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt, the current world record holder, in what should be as intense a final as there's ever been. For me, it can never match the high (and subsequent low) of the 1988 final. But I'm allowed to stay up late now, so at least I won't have a dodgy video recorder to worry about…

Link to this post
Post a comment | 4 comments

Comments

  • Posted on 20 August 2008
  • at 12:50am
  • by vomp

There is so much to say that is positive about these games.

That opening sequence of drummer is still beating: such beauty and order,and then the 100metres. Needless to say the BBC commentators need lessons in diversity and accepting other cultures as they are in the sporting world. I am sure there is so much that is good about China that we could learn from. Thank goodness for Chiles and Johnson for being simple,level headed and professional. For us peace lovers it's "May the best man win, regardless of race, creed or colour"

  • Posted on 17 August 2008
  • at 4:07pm
  • by elronzo

The best moment was Rebecca Adlington when she struck gold (twice!)- a lovely person who thinks a new pair of shoes is just fab! Her mum (and family) managed to get there in time for her second world record shattering medal - even better. The worst moment was the female BBC commentator who continually slagged of the Chinese throughout the first hour of the opening ceremony instead of letting us watch and listed to the spectacle.

  • Posted on 12 August 2008
  • at 3:54am
  • by Helen

I am astonished to have just learned that the 'footprint' fireworks spectacle which we watched were actually generated artificially months ago using computer graphics - simulating how they would appear from a helicopter. The only people to see the real display which did actually happen were those in Beijing watching it live from the ground. The Chinese organisers decided to simulate how they would appear from a helicopter months ago as they thought that it would be too dangerous for a helicopter to actually film the real event. If they can do this it worries me what else can be artificially created and passed off as the real thing? Rather sinister if you think about it for too long from a political propagandist standpoint given the Tibetan situation!

  • Posted on 10 August 2008
  • at 4:42am
  • by Worldlife

The worst Olympic moment was the spoiling of the opening ceremony at Beijing by the BBC TV commentators not knowing when to stop talking and to watch, listen and wonder with the live audience and their viewers

Post a comment

Do you have something to say about this post? Share your thoughts…

Post a comment

(first or nickname only)

Please do not include any personal or personally identifiable information about yourself or others (including email addresses). All information you submit about yourself or others can be viewed by others.

Thank you for your comment

Thank you for your comments. All comments will be looked at by a moderator, however, due to the numbers of comments we receive, we can't promise that all will be posted on the site.

Post another comment

More


Advertisement