The charm of dedicated, devoted and articulate Olympics athletes

Last Modified: 25 Aug 2008
By: Alex Thomson

"Look at how these athletes are. Talking openly, you sense these are real people" - Alex Thomson blogs from Beijing.

I've changed my mind about the Olympics. It's not that I was much of an Olympo-sceptic, to use Boris Johnson's favourite word of the week.

I wasn't particularly against it, or cynical, but like almost everyone else in the UK I just couldn't get warmed up about a vast jamboree in a city that I don't happen to live in.

But latterly the Beijing experience has changed my mind.

It's not the Totalitarian Games themselves, with their general lack of atmosphere and overwhelming sense that the human race is being used as props in a vast advertising campaign to prop up the moribund Communist Party of China.

It's not the appalling, cloying commercialism as the global giants come clomping into Olympicsville here, just as they will in London.

Nor is it the ludicrous failure of any officials or politicians (Boris J excepted) to say anything meaningful by way of criticising any aspect of these games whatsoever.

Nor is it the depressing and virtually useless "press conferences" held here by the IOC and the Beijing games' organisers.

Talk to the sports hacks out here and they are all dreading going back to football and trying to get meaning from the £50,000 a week brigade.

Nope it's none of the above. All of the above make me agree with the IOC's view that the games must never be as vast and lavish as they have been in China because only one-party China would force such a thing to happen on such a scale.

What's made me come round are simply the athletes themselves. You realise, watching and listening to interviews with these people, how different they are from the monotone, pointless interviews our so-called sports stars deliver from the world of football.

Why don't we ban interviews with footballers? Look at how these athletes are. Talking openly about their lives, you get the sense these are real people. They actually have something to say. They are unafraid to say it and are generally articulate enough to do so.

What a refreshing change from the Baby Bentley sent back home and paraded after Premiership games, to mouth predicable platitudes. What a complete waste of electricity that custom is.

Talk to the sports hacks out here and they are all dreading going back to football and trying to get meaning from the £50,000 a week brigade.

No these people are different, dedicated, devoted, but real.

Bring 'em on in 2012.

It's the athletes that have changed my mind.