Other Olympic Projects

Friday, March 31, 2006

On the off chance that you’ve been living in a box (cardboard or otherwise) for the last year, let me remind you that last July, London was selected as the host venue for the 2012 Olympic Games.

This was great news that brought delight and rapture to a lot of people, many of whom hadn’t realised they cared that much. The day after the announcement the London bombings dampened the celebrations somewhat, but in the weeks and months that followed, there was much chattering (mostly in pubs) around the land. Many wondered about volunteering to help marshal the games, others about how to get tickets – mostly, people just wanted to be there.

On the day of the announcement itself, Mr van de Poll posed the question that was being asked by many other nutters across Great Britain – “what event are we going to compete in?”

This week, an article on the BBC website brought the nation’s attention to Jonathan Phillips, the self-proclaimed 2012 Olympic Competitor. His aims are simply expressed (but I suspect will be harder to realise): “Find a sport, train hard, gain Olympic qualifying standard, convince a country to give me nationality and a place on their Olympic team, raise £1m for charity and be there at London 2012.”

Having a rummage around Jonathan’s site, Statue John found a reference to another Olympic nutter. Nick is the proud owner of 2012 Gold, a website he is using to track his progress. He’s determined to represent Great Britain at archery in 2012 (at Lords) and win a gold medal. The only thing stopping him is that at the start of his campaign he had no “prior competitive experience.”

I have e-mailed both of them in the hope that at some point during our respective quests, we can collaborate. In the meantime, I wish them luck!

I have since been hunting the web for more Olympic nutters. The closest thing I’ve found so far lends itself more to collaboration with the aforementioned Statue John - this sculpture in Sarasota bears the title “Olympic Wannabes”.

Up to this point, I've not been one for putting a load of links in the sidebar to other blogs that I like to read - this isn't a blog about me, it's a blog about what I'm doing - but I may have to start keeping a list of all the other people out there (and I'm sure there must be more of us) with Olympic projects.

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Knee Update - had the stitches out this morning and am down to using one crutch/walking stick, so making good progress. The nurse who took the stitches out did suggest that maybe I ought to be doing rather more lying around with my leg elevated as it is still pretty swollen, but needless to say I pretty much ignored that.