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That newly-famous human fish, Michael Phelps, had a weird moment last week. As he was presented with gold medal four, or five, or whatever it was, the competition officials suddenly realised he was on again straight away in another event. Still wet from the presentation, he was thrust back into the pool. Perhaps slightly shellshocked, he fell behind some of the others; and then you could actually see him realising: hold on, I'd better win this - which, of course, he did, effortlessly.
Phelps's achievement in winning eight golds is indeed extraordinary. But they are essentially medals for variants of the same thing. Is he really eight times the Olympian of, say, Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele, who I watched win gold in the 10,000 metres last night? Bekele did the 10 kilometres in 27 minutes one second, an Olympic record, an average speed of just under 14 miles an hour for nearly half an hour. He was actually faster in the second half of the race than in the first. There is, however, only one gold medal in the men's 10,000 metres.
There's been a certain amount of shock at the "revelation" that ever more of the opening ceremony here turns out to have been faked, a shock which strikes me as naive. To recap: this is an event for which about a fifth of the population of Beijing have been temporarily or permanently displaced.
It's an event dotted with Chinese child gymnasts who have been starved for the last four years and some of whom are strongly suspected to be 14 (below the sport's age limit) rather than the 16 officially proclaimed on their passports. It's an event where in the symbolic beach volleyball clash between Russia and Georgia, two of the Georgian competitors turned out to be from Brazil, only having visited their supposed motherland twice in their whole lives. The opening pageant is the least of it. At least that was supposed to be showbiz.
But the one central piece of Olympic baloney which hasn't been challenged much is the medal-toeffort ratio. No Olympic gold is easy to win, or anything like it. But some, whisper this, are clearly easier than others, and some relative standings are frankly bizarre. Who decides that taekwondo is worth four times as many gold medals as triathlon, a sport often described as the toughest of all? Who thinks that wrestling, a sport that in many countries is little more than a joke, deserves more golds than gymnastics?
Well, it's our old chums, the International Olympic Committee - the same people whose appetite for ever more grandiose sporting monuments we cheerfully mock, but whose decisions about sporting merit we unquestioningly accept. Alas, rather as the Callaghan government printed money in the Seventies, the IOC has been messing with the currency of medals.
If you know someone who's trained their heart out in the taekwondo, please don't write in - I'm not belittling anyone's effort or their just reward. All I'm saying is that Olympic medal tallies are one of those things that demand the suspension of disbelief. For all Team GB's weekend of triumph, we should try to contain our excitement.
Reader views (1)
If all your life amounts to is the pursuit of a silly little gold medal handed out by a manifestly broken organisation, then you are to be pitied not envied.
- Mikko Takala, Drumnadrochit, Scotland, 18/08/2008 11:20
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