In 2012 my true love gave to me, five multi coloured rings!

I don’t know Steve Redgrave. I have no personal interest in Matthew Pinset so why, yesterday morning, was there a lump in my throat?
The race was thrilling. Close all the way. Team Great Britain grasped rowing gold by just one 800’s of a second. It was a race that saw me shouting at my TV screen in excitement. Then, when they clinched victory I could have cried. Television was amplifying the raw emotion that must have been felt in that team GB boat.
It’s one reason I like television. Good evocative programming can create and amplify emotions from nothing. It might sound sad but I have suffered more emotion at the hand of the magic glowing box than I have through the loss of loved ones. My great grandmother died ten years ago and I didn’t shed a tear. Four complete strangers win a boat race yesterday and I was ready to blub.
These four men though were true athletes. Forget your Beckhams and Rooneys it is the GB rowing team that display the attitudes of true sportsmen. They train for four years for one victory then fade away off our screens back to their lives – we don’t have to suffer their faces all over the press or have Heat Magazine ramming what their fashion tastes are like down our throat. They do it for the sheer love and thrill of the sport not for the million pound advertising deals.
I hope London does win the 2012 Olympics. Forget football – real sport is coming home.