Greetings from smiling sailors and a gloomy Andy Murray at the games
Updated on 09 August 2008
Blogging from Beijing, Alex Thomson finds the mood in Team GB's sailing team is very different from the one in the tennis camp.
Maybe it's the effect of the incessant travel, maybe it's what money does to you, maybe he just didn't want to be there, maybe he's just feeling totally knackered and fed up. Andy Murray, I couldn't work him out.
Or maybe it was me.
You see, I'd just come from interviewing two of the UK's sailing hopefuls and they could not have been more different from our star tennis player.
The sailors couldn't do enough to help. They would've happily gone on answering our questions all day I suspect and missed the whole opening ceremony.
Sailing's one of our success stories at the games of course, though its practitioners remain well away from the limelight. Because of the need to have a sea to do it on. They are also sundered from the hothouse of Beijing.
So they were genuinely chuffed to be here and talked jibs, tillers and spinnakers with the assembled hackery.
And could we do individual interviews after the press conference? Why of course, nothing could be less trouble.
Let's hope he (Andy Murray) can stay the course till there's a vacancy at or near the top of the slams. Right now he doesn't seem to be enjoying it, unlike our sailors.
And so to the tennis in a new press conference room just up the corridor in this vast media complex at the Olympic Zone.
Even in advance we were told that Andy Murray would not be available for individual interviews and the press conference itself was a short, verging on curt affair.
The presence of his brother seems to do little to lift his spirits and it might just be me but he looked tired out. The Olympic village was, he said, like going back to school with its vast canteen.
It was certainly not the life of private houses and luxury that most tennis players live in and many others have chosen here at the Olympics.
So fair play to him for that.
But then we got to the reason for his demeanour I suspect. A perfectly innocent question about whether or not he had had time to enjoy and celebrate his recent success.
What followed was a monotone outpouring of international air schedules during which he had to correct himself, it not being easy to remember how many places you have been, in such a short space of time.
And that kind of travel for Andy Murray is life. Let's hope he can stay the course till there's a vacancy at or near the top of the slams. Right now he doesn't seem to be enjoying it, unlike our sailors.
