Now like all right-minded people, I couldn't give half a flying f-word about the main Olympic events: I mean, seriously, in what world is 100 metre sprint a spectator sport? Yes, there's some really fast people, cool, I'm happy for them that they have somewhere to test themselves against the best in the world and attempt to prove themselves the best of the best, but as a nation, do we all have to get so excited in the build-up? If you want to put years of hype into an event that lasts at most 12 seconds ... we all know there's a sex joke there; I'm not going to spell it out for you, just insert (giggity) the punchline that works best for you and we'll move on.
What's more, we managed to create a ticketing system apparently designed for the sole purpose of furnishing the sad weirdos who seem to get a kick out of spunking money away on pointless sports tickets with tickets to events even they considered to be not worth it at an exorbitant cost and in the most complicated way ever devised for such a simple process.
Now, I'm not saying all of the Olympics is bad: I love team sports so every four years I will be found watching as much Basketball, Football and Handball as I can while the Olympics are on. This being the first time since like the 1940s that there has been a GB Football team I figured I'd go and watch a game or two live. But the powers that be have put paid to that, with both the men's and women's teams playing their matches so far away from me that the time and expense I'd have to put in do not make it worth my while. This is supposed to be Britain's games and yet the few events that are allowed out of the host city are put so far out of the way that attending them is a logistical nightmare. The best games take place in Cardiff, which believe me is nowhere near accessible, or at Wembley, which is bloody expensive. Not one match takes place in the city where Football was born - Sheffield - and the nearest matches to there are dead expensive latter-stage games and/or between two countries you've never heard of, never mind want to see play football.
On the face of it, tickets starting from £20 which allow you to see two games in one day seem like good value, but given that you'll be lucky to find four good teams on the bill at once and that "a stadium near you" is a concept that the Olympics organisers clearly felt wouldn't be a good selling point, that £20 can easily turn into £180 for travel both ways, one match you want to see and one you will have to sit through and a hotel room because there's no transport back until the next day.
Seriously, nobody thought extra trains or coaches might be a good idea. With fans from across the country and around the world having some interest in the events taking place, nobody thought it might be a good idea to keep the transport network going after the final whistle of these events. We spent all this money on getting London ready and then when it came to the events away from the capital, they clearly selected the venues by having Seb Coe blindfolded, sticking pins into a map of Britain and hoping that people could actually get to these places. If it'd been left entirely up to our Olympic committee, I'm sure the GB Football teams would have played their games in Canada, Australia, the Falklands and Gibraltar. It would arguably have been easier to get to games on Gibraltar, in fairness. I'm sure Jet2 or Ryan Air must do cheap flights to there.
The two best football venues outside of London are Newcastle's St. James' Park and Manchester's Old Trafford, these are used like once each, while Cardiff gets three or four games at least and the shitehole that is Coventry's Ricoh Arena gets a semi-final match. Great cities like Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham don't get a look in, despite all having at least one nice Football stadium.
Add to this the fact that the country will be left with crippling debt while only London reaps the financial rewards and this whole thing starts to feel a bit like a kick in the teeth to the rest of the country, particularly the North. The part of Britain that makes it great will not find it easy to benefit from the Olympics. We can't be flitting off to London the whole time to watch the games and we have had very little investment from Olympic funds. The few things they do let out of London are kept away from us as much as possible and the televised sports will be the pointless athletic events that are no fun to watch.
The opening ceremony will be the biggest anti-climax in history after China's spectacular in 2008 and to cap it all off, the logo looks like a well-known cartoon character felating someone.
Someone, somewhere is taking the piss. There is not one benefit I can see to the Olympics being here. Roll on Rio 2016. When the Olympics are back where they belong - the other side of the world - we'll all feel much better.
Rant over.
No comments:
Post a Comment