RULE BRITANNIA
The Paralympics have just finished in Greece which means that finally we can forget all about the Summer Olympics for another 4 years. The Winter Olympics of course are another thing altogether but at least in post of those “sports” there’s a reasonable chance of someone injuring themselves severely, and of course we have the bonus of the fact that the Chinese are crap at winter sports so it’s not shown here at all anyway.
Normally the Paralympics don’t even register in my consciousness as they are the same sports as in the normal Olympics only played by people who are nowhere near as good. In fact it’s only in comparison with the Paralympics that the Olympics becomes worth watching.
This year however I heard something on the radio that prompted me to got the trouble of checking the BBC website.
It seems that when it comes to Paralympic games we are world beaters. Apparently we are hopeless at most normal games, but lop a limb off us and we immediately become unstoppable! We got 35 gold medals this year, which puts us second in the table behind China (and I think most would agree they have more than their fair share of cripples so are bound to be able to find a few good ones. In fact the cynic in me questions whether they don’t just take their B team who couldn’t quite make the grade for the normal games and removed a few strategic body parts). But most importantly, and the only reason I even bothered to take note of this, is that this also put us way ahead of those cocky little Aussies, who scraped together a measly 26 golds, though they were better at being second or third best than us (presumably usually behind as British gold medal winner).
It seems that, having invented most of the sports and games that matter in the world (in our spare time, when we weren’t busy building the greatest empire the world has ever seen), and then perfected them, us Brits have decided to let the rest of the world have a run at the “able-bodied” version of these activities while we concentrate on making things as hard as possible for ourselves by playing them without the benefit of things like legs, arms or eyesight.
For those who care the top 10 table is…
Rank Country Gold Silver Bronze Total
1. China 63 46 32 141
2. G.B. 35 30 29 94
3. Canada 28 19 25 72
4. U.S.A. 27 22 39 88
5. Australia 26 38 36 100
6. Ukraine 24 12 19 55
7. Spain 20 27 24 71
8. Germany 19 28 32 79
9. France 18 26 30 74
10. Japan 17 15 20 52
compared to the “normal” games where we just scrape in…
Rank Country Gold Silver Bronze Total
1 U.S.A. 35 39 29 103
2 China 32 17 14 63
3 Russia 27 27 38 92
4 Australia 17 16 16 49
5 Japan 16 9 12 37
6 Germany 14 16 18 48
7 France 11 9 13 33
8 Italy 10 11 11 32
9 S. Korea 9 12 9 30
10 G.B. 9 9 12 30
Thank God there are 4 more years before we have to go through all this again.
