UK at the olympics

I’m not an athlete in the slightest, but watching people who are the best at what they do can still get me fired up. That happened when I sat down with some Team GB Olympic highlights. There were events I knew very little about, and others I realised I’d never watched at all.

I started with London 2012, which happened before I moved to the UK at the end of 2015. I’d never seen that opening ceremony. The size of the set and the number of people involved in the Industrial Revolution performance were impressive, and watching them make the Olympic rings was very cool.

The Queen and James Bond is hard to beat

Viewers had suggested the London performance involving James Bond and the Queen. I wasn’t sure exactly where it fitted into the ceremony, but the pairing itself was wonderful. It seemed so British, with two figures everybody would recognise.

That made me wonder what Canada would do in the same situation. If Toronto hosted the Games, which two figures would symbolise the country like that? I could imagine people suggesting a moose and a lumberjack, and honestly, I didn’t have a better answer. Britain had a pretty good combination here.

In the film, Bond and the Queen take a helicopter over London before the sequence reaches a jump into the Olympic Stadium. Obviously, she didn’t actually jump out of a helicopter. I wondered who the body doubles were and what it would be like to tell someone that had been your day at work.

I loved that she had agreed to take part, with the dogs involved too. The whole thing was unbelievable to me, and I could have watched it a couple more times. This was a performance I was discovering years later, rather than something I’d been in London to see happen.

Field hockey wasn’t my favourite school sport

For Rio 2016, I watched the British women’s hockey match against the Netherlands. To me, hockey normally means ice hockey, so I call this field hockey. I used to play it in high school and kind of hated it. Bending over the stick made my back hurt, and I’m not even tall.

Watching elite players was another matter. There was something about seeing people who knew exactly what they were doing that made me want to cheer them on, even though I wasn’t about to become an athlete myself. It got me properly excited.

I hate when a match ends with a shootout, so that part wasn’t my favourite. But when the British team won, I was very happy for them. A win’s a win, even if I’d rather the result hadn’t come down to penalties.

I can admire the gymnastics without wanting to try it

Moving on to Tokyo clips, I watched a horizontal bar routine. I like gymnastics because there’s so much variety in what the athletes are doing, rather than simply watching someone cover a distance as fast as possible. This routine made me think about how dizzy I would be, and I started feeling a bit nauseous just watching.

I used to watch a lot of diving with my dad, too. We found it interesting, and we’d give the dives our own scores while sitting on the couch. There is something ridiculous about relaxing with your feet up and judging an athlete performing at that level, but that was part of how we watched it together.

Some of the other clips left me much less informed. I couldn’t really tell what had happened in the taekwondo bout, and I stumbled over the scorecards in other highlights. I was enjoying the sport, but I certainly wasn’t offering an expert account of what I was seeing.

Weightlifting was something I actually do

The first weightlifting clip was frustratingly short. It mostly showed the athlete celebrating, and I wanted to see the weight actually being lifted. Going to the gym and lifting heavy weights is one of the few athletic activities I enjoy, so this was something I particularly wanted more of.

Then I found a longer view of Emily Campbell’s lift. I loved her GB nails, and I noticed she was lifting without straps. I was using straps myself by that point because of my grip, so seeing her do it with just her hands was impressive. Good for her. That was exactly the bit I’d wanted to see, and I was very happy watching her get it.

Watch my full Team GB highlights reaction.