TV VIEW:IF YOU'RE a Republic of Ireland (football) and Munster (rugby) supporter it's hard, after the few days you've endured, to know what to say. If it's any consolation, and it won't be, you could be Michelangelo Giustiniano, possibly the only sporty resident of planet earth to have had a more miserable time of it than yourselves.
It’s all very well going into a contest with all guns blazing, but if you end up making schoolboy errors your hopes of success will, inevitably, be marginally less than zero. That, coincidentally enough, was the gist of Richard Dunne and Ronan O’Gara’s respective post-match telly chats on Friday and Saturday.
As a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist Michelangelo had a sharp shootin’ reputation, but, last week in India, he ended up sharply shootin’ at the wrong target, leaving him medal-less and in a state of red-faced mortification.
“I am embarrassed for me, my friends, my family and my country,” said the poor fella after his efforts to win bronze in a four-way shoot-off were somewhat impaired by him peppering a rival’s bullseye. Or whatever it is you pepper in shooting. “I’m going to flagellate myself tonight,” he said, “but I haven’t found anything to hit myself with yet.” You had to worry a self-inflicted pistol-whipping was in the offing.
The last judgement, if you like, on the Australian was a lowly sixth place finish, although, in some ways, that was probably a good thing.
If he’d won a medal the autograph hunters would have been out in force and with a name like Michelangelo Giustiniano he’d have been in Delhi until Christmas.
We have to confess, though, that Michelangelo’s mishap is one of the very few Commonwealth moments we’ve stumbled upon, our enthusiasm for the Games on a par with that of the Indian public: roughly zilch.
Granted, we’ve enjoyed the screw-ups, not least the head of the Games, Suresh Kalmadi, welcoming Princess Diana to the opening ceremony, leaving Charles and Camilla shuffling a touch uncomfortably, but as Michael Johnson put it recently, in athletics “a Commonwealth title barely registers any respect on a global stage”.
So, who’s on duty with the BBC at the Games? Well, yes, Michael Johnson. Mind you, he’s far from alone, when we tuned in yesterday it looked like the Beeb was trying solve Britain’s unemployment problem, John Inverdale, Hazel Irvine, Colin Jackson and Denise Lewis just some of the faces we spotted squeezed on to the couch alongside Johnson.
“So, what exactly is the Commonwealth Games,” he might have inquired.
“Well, it used to be the British Empire Games.”
“What happened the Empire?”
“It went the way of Michelangelo Giustiniano’s medal hopes.”
“Down the swanny?”
“Yep.”
So, we’ll leave the whole business to Charles, Camilla and Co, while moving on to weightier sporting matters. Like the fifth Ironman 70.3 UK.
Australian newspaper The Age wondered if Michelangelo had suffered a “senior moment” in India when he gunned down the wrong target, the prehistoric 57-year-old shooter being Australia’s oldest competitor at the Games. Dennis Bailey, though, is 74, and the only sporting moments he’s experiencing this weather are gobsmackingly vigorous ones.
Last October Bailey was left in intensive care after a serious motorbike crash, needing shoulder surgery, amongst other repairs, before he set off again. And, as Eurosport showed us yesterday, he set off on the Ironman in Wimbleball, England, unruffled by a partially collapsed lung and still damaged shoulder.
“A 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike and 13.1-mile run makes this race exactly half Ironman distance,” Rob Walker told us, making it seems a bit like a paddle, cycle and walk in the park.
The swimming leg took place in a lake where swimming is banned, so the resident ducks must have been well and truly shredded by the 1,500 triathletes who chucked themselves in. “I couldn’t think of a better thing than to wake up at 6.0am and jump in a lake,” said one of the competitors, his definition of ‘better’ appearing in no dictionary we’ve ever browsed.
Dennis, alas, failed to beat his record of seven hours and 44 minutes, but still finished in the top 1,000.
Not for one moment after his 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike and 13.1-mile run did he hint at regretting not getting a ferry, bus and taxi, which makes him an entirely different beast to the rest of us. You can, incidentally, buy a book entitled ‘Triathlon Training for Dummies’, but after watching Dennis we’re way too fatigued to open it.
