The Olympics so far.

I suppose the whole idea of the first week of the Olympics is to watch baffling sports and sports you haven't bothered with for four years. And in the baffling stakes they don't come much more baffling than the keirin. Come on, hands up who had ever heard of the keirin before Friday? Well it seems they have come up with an event based on someone hogging the middle lane of a motor way. I can't have been the only person to wonder who that old boy was at the front of the race, on what looked like a moped, and did we have another 'lady in red' type scenario on our hands? No, he was supposed to be there, anyway Victoria Pendleton won, so everyone was happy. In fact I find most everything in the velodrome highly confusing. Sir Chris Hoy, him off the cereal adverts, won a gold but I wasn't sure how, or why, everyone was cheering so I assumed he had won. I hear we have gold medal hopes in the men's C-3PO, so good luck lads.

I also watched the judo final when I heard Gemma Gibbons had a chance of gold. Now to judo aficionados it was probably a good, tactical, battle but to the average couch potato, i.e. me, it just reminded me of the late lamented Bravo's Britain's Toughest Towns, where two drunken girls would roll about fighting until their equally drunken pals would drag them apart.

    

Also a couple of geezers won a gold doing, what looked like the rapids at Thorpe Park. 

The rowing is a little easier to understand, cross the line first and you are the winner, but it is also a sport the vast majority of us never clap eyes on from Olympics to Olympics. The rowing was introduced by John Inverdale, who looks like a faded vampire. The type who, if he wandered into Mystic Falls, would have Damon Salvatore's eyebrow arching in a nano-second. Sir Steve Redgrave would sagely predict where  Team GB would come, only for commentators Dan Topolski and the other bloke to ignore him and give us their version of Monty Python's News for Parrots. No matter what was happening, even if the Team GB boat was languishing in last place, that would be their focus. Dan Topolski, who sounds like the Major in Fawlty Towers would boom: "The GB boat is taking on water and sinking, but if they have a good next 50, they are not out of this yet, by Jove." 

Well, we can wave goodbye to all these puzzling. niche sports for another four years. No matter what the media says about aresurgence in rowing or a golden age in the velodrome, in a few weeks, when the Premiere-ship is in full swing, will we really worry about who is doing what in the keirin, or how our cox-less sculls teams are faring at their next meet? No, it will all be vague memories.

Over