i am in beijing.
sadly, not literally, although that had absolutely been an intention of mine, which then didn't quite work out for timing and practical reasons, but in spirit. i love the olympics. as a concept. as an idea. as an event. always have done. always, i imagine, will do. i love everything about it: the drama, the spectacle, the sheer magnitude of it all. i love the fact that it brings everybody together, in peaceful contest, and i love the way it makes heroes not only out of those who go swiftest, fly highest, and are strongest, but also of those who have the courage to hang on in there, come what may, for their own private victory. i love the fact that we celebrate an eric the eel or an eddie the eagle almost as much as a sir steve redgrave. i love the way the olympic movement calls itself a 'movement' and the way it's rooted in ancient greek civilisation, and i love it for giving cities and countries the opportunity to stage the greatest show on earth. so yes: i'm all for the olympics.
and say about china what you will: they know how to stage an olympics. that opening ceremony: well nigh perfect. and, now we learn, also a little fake. which is a pity, because it was impressive enough as it is; faking fireworks or substituting a pretty girl for a slightly less pretty one (is she really?) was hardly necessary. but in any case, how london is going to follow that is, at the moment, anyone's guess. for my money (which, to a very small proportion, it after all is) the thing to do, most likely, is to go in the opposite direction. obviously, what beijing put together in terms of precision, mass choreography, scale and discipline is not going to be matched here. we don't have the numbers, the money or, for want of a better word, the homogeneity in society to come up with that level of visual impact created by performers. i doubt we have the skill, even. and sarah brightman, well... in a way it's probably best she's done her bit now for the olympics. that should put the idea of using her again in the next twenty to thirty years right out of anybody's mind.
of course, the ceremony made a point, at some stage, of representing the 50-odd ethnic groups that make up today's peope's republic of china, but it is still fair to say that one of london's greatest strengths as a city is its genuinely global cultural and ethnic diversity. so london 2012 won't be the same as beijing. and nor should it be. beijing was well nigh perfect, for beijing. for london, a whole different approach will be right. one that plays to london and britain's strengths just in the way that the beijing ceremony played wholeheartedly to the strengths of china. and if that results in a smaller, quirkier, perhaps less bombastic but no less engaging show, that maybe even displays a sense of humour, then so much the better. but in terms of what we wanted from beijing in an opening ceremony, 08 08 08 has delivered. and then some.
settling down now in front of the TV (and - thank you, thank you BBC for the iplayer - at the computer) to absorb wall-to-wall coverage, i realise that here is one thing that has clean dropped off the 'things to do before i die' list: winning the 100m gold. on track or in the pool. in fact, winning any type of medal in any kind of sport for me is now so unlikely as to be considered impossible. and i'm not somebody who uses the word 'impossible' lightly. i really never say never. but the opportunity, i believe i can now concede, for me to represent my country (either of my two countries) at an olympic games (any olympic games, winter or summer) in any sport at all has now, with likelihood bordering on certainty, gone.
but before you start feeling sorry for me: this really is no great loss, seeing that i've never had the slightest ambition to be an athlete of any description, ever. i quit school sports in more or less mutual agreement with my PE teacher (it was more mutual attrition, but i won) by the age of about fifteen, and at the last school i went to for the last eighteen months of my secondary education i set foot in the sports centre precisely once: to tell the teacher there that i wouldn't be coming to any of his classes. (i had, to make this less of a suggestion and more of a non-negotiable statement of intent, brought along a certificate attesting to the dubious usability of my left knee, issued by a sympathetic GP even though the x-ray had shown up nothing of the sort...)
when i and my three best friends at school decided, at one stage, to take tennis lessons, it took us no more than about four weeks to find out that quite as much fun could be had by going for the ice cream not after the class, but during it, and the effort involved was substantially less exhausting.
so really: a sportsman was not lost in me. which makes my admiration for athletes all the greater. i really genuinely wish each and every one of them all the best. for me, just that fact that they've made it there, and are there now, in beijing, not as spectators, commentators or volunteers - all of whom we also couldn't do without, i know - but as participants, makes them little heroes in their own right. some of them become great big heroes, or are such already, and some may in the course of the next two weeks be toppled from their pedestal. but they are all olympians and that, to my mind, makes them great people, and i salute them from afar.
there's one though who i have a particular admiration for. consider this: some eleven thousand men and women compete in this year's olympic games. out of these, exactly ten are publicly, openly, known to be gay: nine women and one man. his name is matthew mitcham, and he's a twenty-year old australian diver. he is, in beijing 2008, the 'only' gay man competing.
now obviously, everybody's sexuality is their own business and i've never subscribed to the view that public figures should be 'outed'. but to think that in the year 2008 there are likely to be in the region of five hundred to a thousand sportsmen and women at world class level who, for reasons of their own, find it necessary or preferable not to come out in public, seems a touch retrograde. and it brings back that old question that was so much on people's minds during the era of 'gay liberation', right into the late eighties and early nineties, and that in almost any other field of excellence - the arts, music, even politics for the most of it, though it's questionable whether politics can be seriously counted as a field of excellence any more - has now been effectively answered: are there any positive role models? is it all right to be young, talented and gay? matthew mitcham says yes. and for that alone he commands my respect.
of course, i can't put his medal hopes above those of our own tom daley, for example; but in any event, in any discipline of any sport: may the best man win. or woman. or team. (or, as in the case of tom daley, youngster...)
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