Sensemaker Daily
Simon Barnes, who first reported on the Olympics in 1984, makes sense of the greatest show on Earth.
Sport is the drunken dramatist: one day providing a script of ludicrous melodrama that would make a soap-opera star blush, the next day offering the flattest possible anti-climax and stars who forget to turn up.
Wednesday gave the British team the first: yesterday on the water it was all about the second. Helen Glover, age 38, gold in London and Rio and mother of three, was expected to win in the women’s four on the rowing lake, but the crew’s last-gasp push was foiled by an accomplished Netherlands boat. And Joe Clarke, in the canoe slalom, gold in Rio, not selected in Tokyo, spoiled the redemption scenario by finishing fifth.
Rowing takes place on 2,000 metres of flat water and is a sport much favoured by the more expensive schools, but it’s still a brutal business. Over the last 500 metres it looked like a repeat of yesterday, when the British women’s quad sculls trailed Netherlands for all but the last stroke – but it wasn’t. Sorry Helen.
Canoe slalom takes place on turbulent water but at least you’re facing the right way, most of the time anyway. Clarke was first after the semi-final with a brilliant run and in the final he came powering onto the course like a bull elephant seal. But he got stuck on a stopper – a violent bit of water going the wrong way – and goodbye medal.
The dramatist of sport failed to deliver yesterday, at least for Glover and Clarke and the British media. But as Frank Bruno said when he knocked an opponent to the floor: “That’s cricket, old boy.”
