Ah yes, but are they happy? Is Britain not suffering from a bit of auld medal fatigue at this stage? I mean, between ourselves, you've seen one gold medal, you've seen all five, right? You've seen one silver, you've seen all seven. You've seen one bronze, you've seen all three. (And counting). Zzzzz. This medal-winning frenzy must become mind-numbingly tedious after a while. By my reckoning, they won more over the weekend than we have since they first started leppin' and sprintin' and shot puttin' in downtown Athens around 776 BC (Before Carruth).
Are we any sense bitter at all, at all, having gone to bed each of the last few nights with "God save our fabalis Queen" ringing in our ears? Of course not. Are we happy for them? Of course we are. We're mature now. We've let Articles Two and Three go. We're willing to let bygones be bygones. We're prepared to forgive them for all the atrocities they've inflicted on our nation, like Emmerdale Farm, Cliff Richard, Leeds United, Delia Smith and Sky News' Mark Saggers. But I tell you what I won't forgive them for, ever: Dan Topolski, the BBC's rowing expert/commentator-type-person. Yes, Dan was entitled to rapturously receive Steve Redgrave's 97th consecutive Olympic gold medal; but his spontaneous combustion, live on air, did nothing for our sinuses or the tubes in our tellies, all of which were well and truly shattered by the time the lads crossed the winning line.
Almost as shattered as the Italian crew that nearly pipped Redgrave (and the other three) to gold. Almost as shattered as a New Zealander having to cope with the Aussies' success.
Anyway, I rang Shepherd's Bush to complain about the biased nature of the BBC rowing commentators' commentating and, specifically, how little sympathy they had for the Italians, but they simply responded by pointing out: (1) you're from Ireland, not Britain, therefore "tough"; (2) you don't pay our licence fee so we're not obliged to listen to your whinging; (3) anyway, you should be watching RTE's coverage of the Olympics, not ours and (4) na, na, na, na, na: you've won the same number of medals as Equatorial New Guinea so far (no wonder you're cranky). All entirely fair points, one had to concede. Still, Dan drove me mad. The women's eights final on Saturday night? "She's their beating heart, like a mother hen with her chickens," he said of Romania's Doina Ignat. "And there she is, leading her chickens home." That's the trouble with Dan, he just doesn't know when to leave an analogy be. He just lays it on thick all the time, eggin' us on - although, admittedly, maybe his baak baak is worse than his bite.
Another thing. Dan gave us a lengthy lecture on the inestimable importance of a cox to his or her crew when all of us know that a cox is to a boat what Andrew Ridgley was to Wham and Mikael Silvestre is to Manchester United: useless, no apparent reason for their inclusion on the team. At least they didn't win the bluest of blue riband events, the men's 100 metres. Funny though, never before have I cared so little about the outcome of the event, or shrugged my shoulders in a weary-from-the-assumption-that-they're-all-drugged-to-their-gills kind of way. Maurice Greene won? Big deal. And how come the only nations caught so far by the most stringent-ever-drug-testing-procedures - "these Games are clean" (chuckle, chuckle) - have been the likes of Latvia, Romania and Uzbekistan? Does that mean we can assume the big nations' athletes are as pure as the driven snow? The old ones are the best, eh?
And how come a depressing succession of Ireland's representatives have failed to even match their personal bests in Sydney? Like Ger Canning. Was it even worth sending him down under? ("Ah, it was," says Marty Morrissey, fresh from his wey-hey-I'm-doing-the-All-Ireland-final-'cos-Ger's-at-the-Olympics stint yesterday). Of course, by the time you read this you'll probably know how Sonia's done. Go on, tell us: did she win a medal? Tell you what, if she did I'm ringing Dan "stick that in yer pipe and smoke it" Topolski. Who knows, maybe an Irish medal will finally come home to roost.
