THE REAL OLYMPIC SCOREBOARD

Not that the Olympics is a celebration of nationalistic chauvinism--after all 'Olympism' teaches us all the higher aspirations of cooperation, sportsmanship, and the joy of competing for its own reward, rather than winning for financial gain or glory, right?--but it is inarguable that the 'medal table' can have a powerful effect: in the case of the British press causing an almost universal case of collective amnesia about the stories they went to Beijing to cover (pollution, Tibet, lack of democratic dissent) in favour of Union Jack waving.

But the medal table has a serious flaw: virtually everyone seems to rank the nations involved by their tally of golds--which seems unfair. I can recall old listings which ranked teams by the total medal tally, with the medals weighted, so I went back and computed the standings using the two methods which used to be standard--the 5-3-1 (gold-silver-bronze) and the 3-2-1 methods.

The results are interesting. China, of course, were the overwhlming winners in gold, but behind the USA in total medals (100-110). Figuring the standings by points reveals they narrowly scrape through as Olympic 'champions', while among the top six nations, only two reverse positions.

Here are the top six countries by golden haul: China (51) USA (36) Russia (23) GB & NI (19) Germany (16) Australia (14). Here's how they stand with the 5-3-1 method: China (346), USA (330) Russia (206) GB (149) Auss (132) Germ (125).

I prefer the 3-2-1 scoreline; the placings remain the same but they are tighter: China 223, USA 220, Russia 139, GB 98, Auss 89, Germ 83.

The bad news for the Brits is that any way you look at it, the Aussies move up to fifth. Even better, if you prorate the points totals by population, Australia becomes the per capita champ of the top six, with 4.3 points per million people, against Britain's 1.5 or China's 0.4.

But the overall per capita champ, at least among countries with at least one gold medal, must be Jamaica with just under 10 points per million (26 points on 6-3-2 medals, and 2.7 million people). Of course that breaks down to 6.75 points for Bolt, and 19.25 points for the rest of the country, but we won't take that any farther. If half a dozen runners can turn Jamaica into the 'real' Olympic champions that's good enough for me.

US TRACK AND FIELD SENDS IN THE CLOWNS

The 2008 Olympic Alfred E Newman 'What Me Worry?' gold medal is presented to:
Bubba Thornton, of the US track and field 'coaching' staff. Asked during their pre-Olympic training why Tyson Gay was not working out with the relay team on their passes, Bubba opined thusly: 'There will be plenty of time for that in Beijing'.

Or not, as the case might have been. The double-drop disqualifications in their heats of both the men's and women's 4x100 relay teams should not have caught anyone by surprise. Earlier in the week, when I heard the Jamaican coach worrying that his sprinters hadn't been practising together, I said to Kirsten, who could care less, 'he ought to talk to the Americans'.

Because far from being a shot out of the blue, bad baton skills are a tradition among American sprinters. Just to go back to the last Olympics, the women's sprint replay team again flubbed the passing, and didn't medal, while the men performed a skilled imitation of the Three Stooges handling a stick marked TNT with a burning fuse, and lost the gold medal to Britain. When you consider that the fastest British runner had a slower personal best than the slowest American,
that took some doing.

This is a disgrace, and it's the same at every major competition. It is a problem, because it's not like this is a college team, where you practice together all the time; these guys are professionals who have their own programmes. But at some point along the line, someone at US Track and Field has to wake up and realise that turning the world's fastest runners into a sideshow act from Coleman brothers circus is not in the best Olympic interests of the team or indeed the runners themselves.

Perhaps they could hire Calvin Murphy, one of America's top baton twirlers in his pre NBA days, to help out. Perhaps they could practice with electric cattle prods. Perhaps the could hire my high school track coach, a French teacher who'd learned all he knew about track from books. I ran track my senior year, since the school had given up lacrosse and I had given up on baseball (big strike zone, slow swing). Ed Emery tested my heart beat and determined I should run distance. A few days of watching me lug my 185 pounds around on my short legs, and I'd moved to the 440, where I could chug at top speed as long as possible. Amazingly, I also ran the second leg on the 4x220 relay, and here is where Mr Emery's study proved its worth.

If you get the baton pass right, you not only accomplish the obvious, and avoid disqualification, but you can start your leg already moving at top speed. Watch the US sprinters who turn, take the baton, turn, gather themselves up, and start running. Proper technique has you looking straight ahead, getting up to speed, and taking the baton in the sequence of pumping your hands, so you waste no movement. For a slow starting runner like me, this was a built-in advantage.

Has no one ever explained it to the US Olympic team? Can't they see the advantage? Haven't they run film of some of the great relay teams, of Bob Hayes' 8.6 in Tokyo, or even the Brits' flawless handovers in Athens. One of the first rules of sport is DON'T BEAT YOURSELF, but in track and field, the US had a noble tradition of doing just that. Remember too, in the Olympics there never is 'always next year'.

By the way, back in 1968, my best time in the 440, running on grass, was 54.0 (and I finished second in that race). Mark Fitzpatrick, who would win the state AAU the next year, and I finished 1-2 in 8 of our 9 meets, and I actually elbowed him and won once. My last year of college I ran a 58 second quarter in football cleats, with helmet and shoulder pads on, and when I was 27 I lost a bet at Parliament Hill, saying I could still beat one minute and running it in 61 seconds.
Don't ask me to even consider one lap today. But if US Track and Field want to hire me as a relay coach, I'm ready.

UPDATE: This is what makes the Olympics the Olympics...you couldn't script this stuff! My thanks to 'Team GBR' for botching the final handoff, as Craig Pickering, for some reason running the anchor leg, overran his changeover box before getting the baton from Marlon Devonish.
What makes this better is that Team GB has apparently invested more than £500,000 in their relay squads (buying custom batons? bicycles built for four?) and brought in an Australian coach,
Michael Khmel, to transform the Olympic gold medallists into USA-style butterfingers. I hearby withdraw my suggestion US relay teams be forced the watch the Brits in action, but I also hereby extend my offer to coach relays to Team GBR for the 2012 Olympics. They won't even have to pay relocation expenses.

FROM GDR TO GBR: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON BRITAIN'S OLYMPIC SUCCESS

Since bean counters run every other facet of life in our Private Finance Initiative United Kingdoms, it's not surprising that cash from the national lottery, the ultimate regressive tax on stupidity, has received so much credit for Britain's (actually the UK is listed, with great geopolitical awareness on the part of the IOC, as GB & NI, or GBR in Olympic coding) amazing tally of medals. And amazing how quickly a country's media can turn from celebrating individual effort, valiant falling short of the ultimate prize, competition for its own sake, and abhorrance of rampant nationalism every time the American or Russian or Chinese anthem is played, to flag waving triumphalism of the likes this island hasn't seen since they were desperately trying to fix events in the 1908 Games!

The cost accountants have done a remarkable job. They realised quickly that there is no real point in pouring money into sports where every nation has a sporting chance, like athletics. All it takes is somewhere to run, and you can become a track star. Ditto team sports: all those competitors, all that time, all that money, and it results in just one lonely medal. You need to target your money where it will haul in the most gold.

Britain has always done relatively well in the rich man's events: showjumping and sailing, sports where you need to own a horse or a boat in order to succeed. In most of the world, the only people who own boats are busy using them to desperately seek the few fish left swimming round our seas. Funding poured into those areas would find competition relatively thin on the ground.

If the sport can be helped by technology, so much the better. It's no coincidence Britain's biggest gain in this Olympics has been in track cycling, all graphite wheels and aerodynamic helmets. Why not pour money into road cycling? Well, in road cycling all you need is a road and a bike: cyclists come from all over the world. Track cycling, more medal intensive anyway, requires a velodrome: no banked track to practice on, no track cycling team.

It occurs to me that we had seen this all before: the same ethos that powered East Germany to its disproportionately great Olympic record. They homed in on events like the luge in the Winter Olympics: technology, specialist course (of which there were only nine in the world in those days) and lots of available medals. I wrote the obituary of Manfred Ewald, head of the East German Olympic committee, for the Guardian (you can read it here) and pointed out that, despite being disgraced, in the end he had won, because the entire sporting world followed down the path he had blazed.

But the parallel wasn't perfect, because a key factor in the success of East Germany was, shall we say, biological enhancement, everything from sex changes to doping. At least Team GB hadn't gone down that road, I thought with relief. Cue Christine Ohuruogu's win the 400m hurdles. I am not by any means saying Ohuruogu did not win clean, but I will suggest that, had an East German, or indeed any foreign, runner been banned for life after turning in her fastest times dodging three separate drug tests, and then been re-instated and won Olympic gold, I suspect the British press would react to her victory in a somewhat different way.

It is typically British that the immediate reaction to all this success is for the 2012 organisers to remind everyone that there will be no extra money taken away from the property speculators, construction companies, architects, and consultants who will bleed the taxpayers dry, in order to increase funding for the 2012 athletes, and ensure more triumphant nationalism where it will do the most good: in London. Money talks, and no one walks (except the Mexicans: are they fantastic in the heel and toe, or what?). In the meantime, enjoy the medal tally and remember: from GDR to GBR is only a very small change of one letter.....

HOW I MISSED THE BEIJING OPENING CEREMONY (clue: I waited for highlights on the BBC)

I'm afraid I missed the opening ceremony from the Beijing Olympics. Or the next closest thing: I watched the BBC's edited highlights package that evening at 7pm. It opened with a five minute intro to Olympism by British medal heroes Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent, and Michael Johnson (?) then proceded to a barely 20 minute edit of what was probably the most spectacular opening ceremony in history. Full credit to the Chinese, and the IOC: totalitarianism has always been the best way to go for Olympic games (which reminds me, it was nice to see that old Francoisto, HRH J.A. Samaranch, in the VIP section, enjoying the largesse).

The ceremony made up about half the edit, followed by the entrance of teams, which included Iraq, at which point the Chinese proved they have a sense of humour by cutting to the King of Iraq, George Bush, as the Iraqis entered. Thanks to the BBC for leaving that bit in! They showed the US team, but not the moment when the flag-bearer passed the reviewing stand, to see if he'd dip it or not. They also bothered to show the Australians (though not the Kiwis, Canucks, South Africans, or any Europeans apart from Greece, who march in first) because of that strange masochism that seems to annoit Aussies as honorary Brits unless they're actually winning the Ashes or the rugby, or whatever.

Having cut the actual ceremony short, we were then treated to the aesthetic reactions of Colin Jackson and Sharron Davies, which reminded me of the celebs drafted in to comment on the Macy's float in the Thanksgiving parade 'I hear they spent $2 million on it, Colin, nice intit?' followed by exciting highlights from the earliest of the Olympic events.

Now call me crazy, but I would have thought that to please your 7pm audience, which would have a high concentration of those non sports fans whom the Olympics usually attracts, and who prefer the ceremonies to the sport, you would've shown AS MUCH OF THE CEREMONY AS POSSIBLE and as little of the sporting stars trying to become commentators, much less the relatively minor events scheduled before the opening ceremony. I'm a pretty big sports fan, but I still wanted to see AS MUCH OF THE CEREMONY AS POSSIBLE.

I've worked at nine Olympic games. Favourites: Montreal and Barcelona, Lake Placid and Sarajevo. Least favourite: Moscow and Atlanta (the Moscow of the South). I regretted missing Lillehammer. I'm pretty blase about ceremonies, especially after watching all the rehearsals while I worked in the Coliseum in LA, but I will confess the closing ceremony in Barca was suitably OTT. But I did catch a couple of minutes of the Beijing ceremony live in passing, and was actually looking forward to seeing more. I remember over the years missing the volleyball final because Britain's show-jumpers will be in a seventh-place playoff match, or suffering through ancient athletics commentators telling me what a lovely shot some ten foot gimme is in basketball (in fairness, John Amechi provides some good analysis in this year's tourney--though the edit of the USA-China game oddly omitted the bit where the lead changed hands in favour of the US extending their lead), but I really did expect that the opening ceremony would be fitter grist for BBC highlights mill.