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

[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".