The presence of 335 Russian athletes has raised eyebrows, but finger-pointing from Britain and the US invites dark chucklesWe will ROC you! Let’s face it, the retro cold war touches dripping away at the back of Tokyo 2020 were always likely to run hot at some point. In the end it took a particularly ticklish men’s backstroke 200m to turn the tap.The presence of 335 Russian Olympic Committee athletes at these Games has seemed to surprise those who had assumed the ban for state-sponsored doping might have restricted Russia’s physical presence in some way. Or indeed that Russia’s athletes would have to compete in Japan as something other than Russia, beyond a few shifts in branding and a change of...
The sunshine of successive Olympic golds will spread far and wide throughout a Pacific island community ravaged by CovidI got asked on Twitter why the Fijian players always cry when the national anthem is played. It’s true - most of the time that happens and sometimes it’s so emotionally overwhelming it derails the performance if not kept in check. The initial reaction was to say: “Well it’s obvious isn’t it?” But, that would assume the wider public know about what it really means to all Fijians.On Wednesday the beautiful nation of Fiji won only its second Olympic gold medal, both in the country’s national sport, rugby sevens. There are now 25 Fijians from those two teams who have won a...
The Olympic journeys of Adam Peaty, Tom Daley and Matty Lee, and Matt Pidcock will inspire so many people back homeThis might sound a touch bizarre but I don’t think I quite understood the emotions that millions went through on Super Saturday until I was poolside on Magic Monday. You know that feeling when there is alchemy in the air, and in a blink of an eye one British gold suddenly turns into three. It was a bit like London 2012 when people thought Jessica Ennis-Hill would win, hoped that Mo Farah would join her, and then my long jump victory became the icing on top of a very large cake. Related: Adam Peaty urges UK after Tokyo gold: ‘Now...
I did not sacrifice everything all these years I’ve been boxing and training so hard to settle for a few good performancesThe moment, when it came, was really powerful. Last Thursday night, in our GB Boxing team room in the Olympic village, it finally hit me. This is real. I am about to fight in the Olympic Games and my hopes of winning a medal, with gold being my favourite colour, begin now.We had been in Tokyo for 10 days, staying in a hotel for the first week before we moved into the village and it had all felt a bit surreal. I had this weird feeling this was just another training camp and I couldn’t switch on totally. It...
Watering the soil of cultural participation would leave a greater legacy than any number of British Olympic championsThere was a memorable moment at the emotional zenith of the London Olympics, back in that strange time when it seemed so vitally important the home Games was a success, so deeply shocking that George Michael played “new material” – oh, that new material – at the closing ceremony, and when Boris Johnson was just a…. Well, actually that’s pretty much the same.I don’t like to make Super Saturday too much about me, but it was also the moment I broke the record for witnessing British gold medals in a single day. There is no hard proof that my (yes, my) tally of...