For people that don’t like sport, the Olympics can generally
be explained away as a series of trivial sporting pursuits contested in a far-flung
region for a couple of weeks every four years. Not this time. As London
continues to impress audiences worldwide with the staging of a thus far
spectacularly successful Olympic Games, the British public consciousness is
being increasingly pervaded by the same obscure sports that people wouldn’t
usually bat an eyelid towards. The presence of British medal challengers in
sports such as archery, diving and equestrianism has boosted domestic interest
levels significantly, raising the profile of these sports and their
participants to an incomparable high.
Take shooting, for example. The majority of Brits, myself
included, who tuned into BBC One’s coverage of Thursday’s men’s double trap
final would have never watched a shooting event in their life. But those who
did would have found themselves captivated by a tense climax to a sport which
they were quickly able to gain an understanding of, bringing celebration when
nerves of steel from British finalist Peter Wilson earned the man from Dorset a
treasured Olympic gold medal. The 25-year-old went from a relative nobody to talk
of the town (or rather, the nation) in a matter of minutes, for shooting clay
targets more accurately than anybody else in the world. You can’t get more
obscure than that.
Or can you? On the same day Gemma Gibbons beat the odds to
win an unprecedented silver medal in Judo, a sport which, to the untrained eye,
looks no more than a good old game of rough and tumble. But some brief swotting
up on the sport and a basic understanding of the rules enables you to
appreciate the skill of Gibbons’ manoeuvre in the semi-final, where she
performed an ippon throw in the highly pressurised golden score situation to
beat World and European Champion Audrey Tcheumeo, guaranteeing the Brit a
medal. Gibbons’ twitter following has since skyrocketed from around 600 to over
20,000; always a good barometer of the modern sportsperson’s fame.
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| Sailing enjoys its fair share of the limelight during the Olympics |
The host factor has certainly contributed to a better
understanding and appreciation of the skill, dedication and achievement of the Olympians
of 2012, for ticket-holders, armchair viewers and journalists alike. I’ve been
involved with the BBC’s excellent coverage of the Olympics, a role which has
seen me asked to cover sports such as sailing and fencing, the rubrics of which
I had no idea beforehand. However, after some prior research and attention to
detail while watching them, I feel in a much more privileged position to
appreciate and enjoy the ferocious competitiveness of British sailor Ben
Ainslie, who is pursuing a fourth consecutive Olympic gold, and the devastating
skill of the Italian fencing team, who completed a clean sweep of medals in the
women’s foil discipline.
A more nuanced understanding of a sport cannot illuminate
the countless hours of practice and self-improvement away from the television
cameras that have gone into these Olympians’ moments of reckoning, but it can
leave us better placed to enjoy and appreciate their endeavours. In some ways
this is the beauty of the Olympics. For two weeks the spotlight in Britain is
being shone brightly onto obscure sports to which competitors have dedicated
their life to, a theme which the British public have resoundingly bought into. From
the Opening Ceremony onwards, a genuine ‘feel-good factor’ seems to have
engulfed the nation, creating an atmosphere which has turned the scarcely known
into heroes, and has ensured that the Olympian’s mastery over their chosen
sport has received full, rewarding recognition by a wider, more conscious
audience.
The Search for Excellence hopes you enjoyed this excellent guest post by the talented writer that is Sam Price. You can follow Sam on Twitter @Sam_Price19 and don't forget to follow James on @TSFE2012 . James will be back with another blog tomorrow, after he attends the men's football quarter-final between Senegal and Mexico and the women's marathon in the morning.
