Some thoughts on the Olympics

[girlyswot]

First, because such an extraordinary situation requires some attention (and because it clearly won't last). The British team are third. THIRD. Only China and the US have more gold medals than us. And there are significantly more people in both China and the US than there are in the UK. So, I'd say we're winning. *grins*

Second, I notice that everyone is calling them Team GB and even on their shirts it just says Great Britain. I can't help wondering how the Northern Irish athletes (and supporters) feel about this. I definitely remember it used to say 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland' which was a bit of a mouthful, I know. Surely if you wanted a shorter form, the United Kingdom would be a more appropriate title. If you are unclear about the distinction, this site has a very helpful diagram showing the relationship between the various political, geographical and historical entities that make up the British Isles.

In fact, when they announce that we've won (another) medal (*g*), they announce it in French as Le Royaume Uni, not Grand Bretagne. It comes to something when they get it right in French but not English! One lovely announcer described us as 'The Great Britain' which I thought was nice - distinguishing us from all the other, inferior, Britains.

Comments

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love 'the Great Britain'. It's well known that if someone from Scotland or Northern Ireland is winning, they are British but if they lose they are 'Scottish' or 'Irish'. Team GB is just an irritating modern idea, the Cool Britannia of sport. Which reminds me, rant rant, How long has my home cricket ground, the Oval, been known as 'The Brit Oval'? I've heard this several times lately and it drives me nuts. Not as nuts as hearing Tessa bloody Jowell taking the credit for the athletes' success.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

The Brit Oval? Ewww. How to take a traditional icon with a beautiful, elegant name and turn it into trash in one easy move.

[miss-lilley.livejournal.com]

The Oval one is nothing to do with nationality - it's sponsored by an insurance company called Brit. It was the Fosters Oval a few years back which is worse, to my mind!

[girlspell.livejournal.com]

I've been cheering GB on. You've got a great swimmer in Rebecca Adlington. The US and Australia have always been rival in swimming, but she caught me by surprise. She is amazing.

Yeah..I've noticed the terrific showing by Great Britian.

[fiendish-cat.livejournal.com]

I noticed the lack of '... and Northern Ireland' this time as well. Find it very odd - if I were Northern Irish I would be mightily pissed off.

(Although, the only Northern Irish comptetitor I've been following is Alan Campbell in the rowing and he seemed quite sanguine - talked at one time about 'go Team GB'or something like that)

[petitecrivan.livejournal.com]

You make the part of my brain that remembers my British Studies class go "whee" and explode from the essays I wrote on similar topics. XDXD

[megan29.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that website that explains the convoluted British relationships in a nice diagram that a mathematician can understand. :-) You know, I've learned my share of history lessons about Britain, but for the life of me I can never remember which part of Ireland goes with Britain and which doesn't, and for what reasons they go that way. I am also bewildered by the many national representatives you people have. In football (soccer) and rugby, there is a team for each of England, Scotland, Wales, and I'm not sure about Ireland, but I think each Ireland gets a team. Now that, if you ask me, is highly unfair, since it gives you guys so many more shots at medals. Romania is a union of historical principalities, too, but they never field separate teams.

On the other hand, in the Olympics, GB is only one team (I never knew, until today, that GB is different from UK). However, there is a Chinese team, and a Hong Kong team. This is all strange. I tend to think that it's all political, and it depends on how much clout a country has at each event. The Brits are clearly tight with FIFA, but less so with the IOC. :-)

Anyway, congrats on the very good showing! I loved that swimming final where the Brits (UK-ians?) went 1-3. They called it the British sandwich over here.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

Rugby is almost (ie it's the only sport I know plays like this!) unique in that the Ireland team made up of both the Irish Republic (larger southern part) and the province of Northern Ireland (the small British part, in the top right hand corner of the map). In most sports Ireland just refers to the republic and Northern Ireland either plays by itself or as part of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). My husband's from Northern Ireland so I'm usually quite good at referring to the UK rather than GB. In football (soccer) Northern Ireland plays separately which means that George Best, one of the five greatest footballers of all time, never played in the World Cup and barely had an international career, which was a shame.

[owl]

Well, we invented football and rugby, so I say we can have as many teams as we like :)

[megan29.livejournal.com]

Well, we invented football and rugby, so I say we can have as many teams as we like :)

There's that, I suppose! :-) Though the Mayans like to claim that THEY invented football. I'm glad they're not trying to field the teams of Chichen Itza, Coba, Uxmal and Tulum, though. They might end up defeating everyone else and eating them. :-)

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

I was delighted with the British position on the medal table. I had to go and gloat to Little Tyke, while it lasts. I knew that they were supposed to do better this year, with the extra funding for London. The cycling was supposed to be the medal-winning sport and it seems to be working. I was getting some very codescending comments about Britain being uselss in the school canteen last Monday so i had to explain that this year we'd decided to "buy" medals too (ie fund olympic sports traing) and consequently an independent analist had predicted us to finish above Australia in the medal tally. Of course, I said that I'd believe that when I saw it.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

I was just looking at the BBC discussion page where some idiot was complaining that all our medals were in things like cycling, rowing and swimming and not in track and field. Completely ignoring the fact that the track and field only just started and that most of our real medal hopes haven't competed yet.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

Headdesk!

I think they have targetted funding on cycling, rowing and sailing, however. They are sports that the Asian countries and, to an extent, the USA don't bother with too much so that the competition isn't so stiff. On the other hand, they have the shiny new velodrome from the Manchester Commonwealth and have plenty of rivers and costal access that makes rowing and sailling sensible sports to train for and they are quite cultural "British" sports.

They haven't done that well in swimming, although better than in the past, and have really won the meadals through one outstanding girl.

PS I've just notice that a British man got a broze in gymnastics. That is almost an eating-my-hat achievement!

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

He was amazing!!!!! He did the most difficult routine of anyone, though he made a couple of mistakes so he was in second place with two gymnasts left to go. The first fell off the pommel horse and then the second scored the same mark as him but through some complicated system was judged higher. The commentators were going absolutely hysterical - practically cheering when the other guy fell off. It was really special. And he's only 19, so he should have a good chance of still competing in 2012.

[fiendish-cat.livejournal.com]

I spotted him when the whole shabang started. Not because of his mighty fine looks though. Oh no, not at all. ;-)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The commentators were going absolutely hysterical

My favourite commentators moment was definitely in the men's coxless 4s, when one of them actually screamed/whimpered "The British are coming! The British are coming!". One was tempted to reply, "that's very nice for you, dear, but try to keep it private".

There was a letter in some paper or other last week about the Team GB thing from someone on the Isle of Man pointing out that Team UK didn't cut it, either.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Oh, now that's interesting. I'd assumed that the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands were entitled to send their own teams to the Olympics, as Crown dependencies. If they are to be included then that does make for a very unwieldy team name.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Google tells me that the first IoM athlete to take part in the Olympics did so this year. I imagine the population isn't really large enough for them to have a chance of getting people to the minimum standard.

Perhaps the solution is to join up with the Republic of Ireland, and then we can have "Team British Isles". (If we must have the Team formulation.) Or with Iceland and go for "Team North Atlantic." Otherwise "TEam UK and local tax havens".

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

I was looking at that too, and just don't get it. Australia rarely medals in track and field these days (apart from the odd big-name winner, like Cathy Freeman in Sydney) and no-one here ever mentions it - people just celebrate the medals the country does win. And, as you say, the track and field has barely begun anyway.

[lizarfau.livejournal.com]

It's just brilliant. Seeing the front page of the Age this morning, with a small icon showing the top three places on the medal table and the letters GB there was so great! I've been following the Olympics since Munich and Britain has never been this high up on a medal table before. There must be a few more golds to come in the cycling, too.

Australia usually wins most of its golds from swimming, but still has some gold medal chances in team sports like hockey and basketball and probably cycling too. It will be interesting to see who does finish higher now that Britain is funding sports properly. If population were taken into account, Australia would top the medal table, though!

I've been puzzled about the Great Britain thing - it has always been Great Britain and Northern Ireland before, or United Kingdom. Very strange.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

If population were taken into account, Australia would top the medal table, though!

Not even then, I'm afraid. See here (http://c4news.com/livepages/olympics2008/c4/olympicsResults.html). It's Jamaica by a mile, then Slovenia and Bahrain before Australia.

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about whether NI fits in too.

I imagine that if you are Unionist (like the Campbells) you are fine with being GB, if you are not, you aren't.

On the subject of minority sports, there was a painful succession of people ringing into Radio Five Live this morning, whinging that our medal winners in elitist sports like riding and cycling and sailing and rowing all went to private schools, and they would rather we didn't invest anything in these sports and didn't win any medals until everyone in the whole country could be given free and equal access.

Apart from the fact that Rebecca Romero, Steven Burke and Bradley Wiggins (cycling), Louis Smith (gymnastics), Peter Reed and Mark Hunter (rowing), Ben Maher (showjumping) (and probably a whole bunch more I don't even know about) didn't go to private school, the idea that there are queues of the populace putting down their beer and burgers and fags and battering at the doors of the Manchester Velodrome demanding to be allowed in to exercise was an entertaining one.