I resent the prospect of being force-fed normal television now. Cagefighting at Rio in 2016? Cagefighting and Junior Kick Start? We can but dream.Īll in all – especially when compared to the much-maligned NBC approach – the BBC's red button Olympic coverage has been a resounding success. Mixed martial arts has absorbed so many aspects of these different disciplines that it seems silly not to have it as an event itself. It was a great example of the sport's ferocity – at one point, seconds before she lost the bout, the German competitor twisted her opponent's arm up behind her back and started muttering a string of terrifying German threats at her – but you can't help feeling that mixed martial arts has ruined most Olympic combat events a little.įor example, the overwhelming thought during the judo was 'Hey, this is a lot like MMA', and that was exactly the same with freestyle wrestling.

The match I saw was a bout between Germany's Alexandra Englehart and Venezuela's Mayelis Yesenia Caripa Castillo. Then, yesterday afternoon, came my first taste of women's wrestling – the 48kg freestyle semi-finals. The whole thing is basically Junior Kick Start for members of the European nobility, and Junior Kick Start isn't an Olympic event, is it? No. Dressage really is a procession of toffs in top hats, and there really isn't a point to making a horse skip from foot to foot like Little Lord Fauntleroy. 'It gives you goosebumps' one commentator said after a horse pranced around for a bit, in what should go down as the most hilariously spectacular overstatement of the games.īut, still, the whole thing is unapologetically ridiculous, to the extent that it probably shouldn't be in the Olympics at all. Having just watched a triathlon, where everyone was squished into a scarlet ball of agony as they crossed the line, it came as a nice surprise to see a member of the gentry blithely requesting his steed to canter on tiptoes like a cartoon cat sneaking up on a cartoon mouse. Similarly, the total lack of effort on the athletes' faces is also refreshing. This was a relief, because it turns out that spending an entire fortnight seething with jealousy at 19-year-olds who can pedal a bike as fast as a car is quite exhausting. Unusually for the 2012 Olympics, most of the dressage competitors were older than me.

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