Thursday 25 February
Gold for Germany but GBR is still level pegging with France
They did not quite come back in their droves but they came back and
expected Goergl to win... She did not and the German won. Oops
another script not quite read! Still it was sad that the race could
not be run in the one day but it was still a cracking race (to coin
a phrase).
For the British hopes, or should that be hope, the race did not have
the firework exploding second run. At the beginning of the Games I
felt that Chemmy could reach the dizzy heights of a top ten or even
better, top five. Now I can see that I was being hopeful, even
optimistic. It is a huge ask on any athlete to try and compete
for so many days at such a high tempo. With races being postponed,
delayed and any other description you want to use rather than
cancelled, the emotional preparation, the warm ups, the mental work,
it all takes its toll. I know that Chemmy is an exceptional talent
across the board but would she not be better off picking say three
events and going for those so that she is fresh for them all and can
give 110% in these. Today she looked emotionally and mentally
drained. Yes she gave her all but this maybe a race too many for
her. But how do you tell such a strong racer that she needs to only
do some of the races when she is a strong racer in four of the five
races?
The Games are starting to wind down now. Just the Slalom to go for
both the guys and the girls. The long drawn out events are now
winding up and the Gold Medals are flowing, sadly though non in Team
GB's direction. Just the one so far. With just 1.5% of the
Government investment in sport going to the Winter athletes, this is
not surprising. Yes we have some excellent talents that are just not
getting the support they need. It would be great to just wave a
magic wand and see the coffers open but in reality this is not going
to happen. Governing bodies and athletes themselves need to be more
proactive in sourcing revenue, sourcing suppliers and making their
sport financially viable. Yes this all takes time and resources but
if you do it well then the people employed to do this are covering
their own costs - it is not rocket science but it is vital to the
future generations....
The TV is now showing some of the Highlights of the last two
weeks. And there have been some great performances from all
the athletes. But one thing that has stood out for me has been how
technology has made getting the results etc out so much easier on
the one hand and yet some people have got greedy on this: Twitter
was hardly even thought of four years ago yet this medium saw
results flashed up almost before the racers were down! Competition
between the tweeters to get the results up first was almost an
Olympic sport - eat your heart out Reuters!
Yet the cost of having internet access provided by the IOC was
ludicrous. If a company charged me what we were charged for 14 days
for a month let alone a year, they would not even get a return call.
And then they charge you for just short of the 17 days of
competition and so want you to buy three more days at a rate even
more expensive than the previous charge. WAKE UP GUYS we are not all
millionaires and do not want to have to contribute to reducing the
Canadian national debt.....!
Over the last two weeks I have had some great banter with some of
the ex racers. One in particular has been very entertaining: Four
years ago, Antoine Deneriaz won the Gold in the Downhill. Fate then
dealt him another hand and he was here working for French TV as an
expert analyst. Each morning we would joke about the
medals that our country has won, or not won. An Austrian
journalist joined in the banter this morning yet ran for the hills
when we both mentioned the Austrian Men's Team. Will he get the last
laugh on Saturday, will France trouble the scoreboard on either day
and will I be left with egg on my face come the end of the Games?
What is sure is that we need to sort out money for our athletes or
come four years time there will be NO athletes. It cannot be right
that for a nation that has so many professional whingers (sorry
footballers) who probably blow more money a night at a casino and
not worry about it than it costs to have an athlete in Europe for a
month or so. With a capital City that is one of the leading
Financial centres and many of their staff will be off next month to
go to the City Ski Champs, sure some of them could dig into their
pockets to support the National Team.....or at least subscribe to
Racer Ready......scroll back up to the button on the left that
says....SUBSCRIBE.....easy as one two three!
