Olympics

Not being interested in sport as a whole (Ice Hockey being the main exception to this rule), I can honestly say that the Olympics, along with the discussions concerning reserved traffic lanes and the obsession with Tom Daly passed me by.  Clearly my ignorance allowed a couple of interesting stories to pass me by, and when I stumbled across the Beijing Olympic Gold Medal Diver, Matthew Mitcham, I was surprised by what he had gone through to get to the Olympics and get to the high level that he is at.  

When reading on, I then found out that at 24 he wrote an autobiography, and with my appetite whetted with the outline of the story, I headed off to my usual online suppliers to grab a copy of this book.  Failing miserably to obtain it through my usual channels (it seems that there hasn't been a print run ouside of Australia/NZ), I ended up having a copy shipped by QBD to the UK.  Slightly peeved at the book being AU$ 29.99 and the postage AU$ 25.00, I sincerely hoped that the book was worth it.

I've just spent a couple of hours catching up on the week's television - it's fascinating how TV watching habits have changed since the introduction of Personal Video Recorders such as Sky+ and Freesat/View+.  

Nevertheless, I recorded a programme shown last Wednesday which looked at the 1980 Summer Olympic Games which were held in Moscow.  Back then, when I was a mere two years old, Russia was still firmly under the grip of communism and had only just invaded Afghanistan.  Both the United States and Great Britain tried to boycott the games, although some athletes decided to compete anyway under the flag of the games.