La bienheureuse et la petite have both suffered but coped remarkably well over the last week while I feed my TV sport-watching habit, though the latter has been displaying more of her naughty side recently, perhaps as a protest at not getting enough attention. My excuse is of course that the summer Olympics only come along every four years, and the Olympics in one of my home countries only come along roughly once every thirty years. Not that I've been able to as fully satisfy my urge as I no doubt would have done had we been living back in Blighty. Coverage of the games in France has more or less been restricted to two channels, and naturally that coverage has tended to concentrate on the fortunes of home heroes. Envious of the BBC's 24 live HD streams, moi?
Early on in the fortnight, TV coverage on France Televisions adopted a tone which was a mixture of the genial and the exultant, as French golds in the swimming, canoeing and judo rolled in. Midway through the first week they were having a quiet snigger at the fact that the host country was still awaiting its first title. No doubt I'm just being cynical, but I detected a bit of revelling in schadenfreude. The games should of course have been in Paris not London.
However, it all changed a week ago when the British gold stream started flowing just as the French one dried up. Firstly the presenters on France TV made a big fuss about alleged British cheating in the cycling and rowing, judges favouring British competitors, etc, etc. The fact that the French cycling coach inconveniently admitted that they would also have deliberately crashed in the event of a poor start was largely ignored. As for the bias towards home competitors, dare I suggest it was bit of a sore point. The games after all should have been in France...
Since then it seems to this particular viewer, albeit perhaps overly sensitive, that British successes have been pointedly ignored. At one point France 2 was showing badminton, a game normally rarer on TV than tiddlywinks, while a track cycling final that ended in British victory was going on. This in a country that is home to the greatest cycling race in the world. Fortunately Eurosport was immune to partisan considerations and showed the cycling. It was almost enough to turn me into a bigoted nationalist.
There has also been constant carping by commentators about problems (transport nightmares) and perceived injustices at the London games, particularly the alleged marginalising of the French language. One presenter was outraged by the lack of announcements in French during an archery event at Lords. Well, what did he expect of an institution that only started admitting women members a little over ten years ago? It was of course a Frenchman who was the driving force behind the first modern Olympics, though a certain Shropshire village claims he got the idea from them. The modern Olympics are a British invention after all. So there…
