Television view: Granted, not everyone has been engrossed these past few days; not everyone needed to be sedated to calm their frenzy at the prospect of watching wall-to-wall shooting and synchronised diving. Some, indeed, won't even switch on their tellies until the athletics start up, regarding the opening four days of the Olympics as a "television unspectacular".

There are, we fear, as many empty armchairs out there as there were seats at the morning baseball game between Italy and Japan, but we put this down to those fly-by-nights whose Olympic viewing will only start at 9.10 next Sunday evening and end 10 seconds later, or however long the men's 100 metres final lasts.

We haven't got our hands on television viewing figures to date but our market research, based on a poll of one, hasn't been encouraging.

"Did you see Greece win gold in the men's synchronised three-metre springboard final last night?"

"Would ya go 'way and get a life."

Their loss. It's likely to be four years before they get another chance to see synchronised diving on telly, and George Hamilton, for one, clearly reckons four years is four years too many.

"We have another night of Greek celebration," he whooped. "European football champions and Olympic synchronised diving champions, all in the space of a couple of summer months! Theodoros Zagorakis, Angelos Charisteas and now Nikolaos Siranidis and Thomas Bimis - Greek heroes all!"

Giorgos Hamiltopoulos, then, is getting in to the Olympic swing of things, unlike the American brothers Justin and Troy Dumais. They had the whiff of gold in their nostrils as they boing-boinged ahead of their final dive, but while they didn't quite produce synchronised belly-flops they both formed upside-down Ls as they entered the water.

Like ourselves Hamiltopoulos wasn't certain whether this was a good or bad thing - their dives mightn't have looked pretty, but they were synchronised. Their marks, however, suggested that while every other Olympian dreams of making a splash in Athens it is, actually, the last thing divers want to be doing. The tidal wave the Dumais boys created with their entries, one that almost required the evacuation of the arena, was, in fact, a diving no-no. Gold to Greece.

"I wouldn't have known a nip from a tuck a week ago," Bill O'Herlihy had confessed before the final; now, like ourselves, there's nothing he doesn't know about perfectly executed inward 3½-somersault tucks.

That, you non-believers, is the beauty of turning up on time for the start of the telly Olympics.

Bill also tried to get enthusiastic about shooting when Longford's own Derek Burnett was in action, but, evidently, when Bill sported and played on de Banks in his youth 'twasn't sportin' and playin' of the trap-shootin' kind.

"As somebody who was reared in D4 and on rugby and whatever," he asked Ryle Nugent, "what's trap-shooting like to watch? Is it a bore or is it interesting?"

"Well Bill, I think you'd probably find it a bore," said Ryle, "but I found it very interesting."

"Oh reeeeeally?" said Bill.

A technical knock-out to Ryle, then, more comprehensive a victory even than boxer Andy Lee's triumph over Mexican Alfredo Lopez. It struck us, though: Ireland had begun the Olympics impressively in shooting and fighting.

We'll just never shake off that stereotype.

Yesterday, though, brought only grim news - Gillian O'Sullivan, Nick Sweeney and Jamie Costin all in the wars - before Tony O'Connor added to our concerns, telling Myles Dungan, while commentating on the rowing, that Sam Lynch had required three stitches in a hand wound.

"He was cutting some bread in the kitchen in the little flat they have and the knife slipped," he said. "Sam would be more used to the sliced pan but you don't get that out here - it being Europe, there's no Brennan's bread."

Dungan promptly appealed for sliced pans to be flown out to Lynch and his double sculls partner, Gearóid Towey.

We don't know if Pat the Baker has ever considered sponsoring a rowing team but, Pat, this could be your chance.

Elsewhere, the big news yesterday was Kostas Kenteris's plea of innocence ("after crucifixion comes resurrection"), which might have led to RTÉ pundit, ex-swimmer and current doctor Gary O'Toole wiggling an ample eyebrow in a mildly quizzical way.

Gary had already expressed some wonder at the Greek sprinter's ability to have "a motorbike crash without a motorbike", an observation that had Bill pirouetting in mirth in his chair. "I'd like to meet the orthopaedic surgeon who diagnosed him with whiplash," said Gary.

Could this surgeon, we speculated, be simply contributing to the Greek compensation culture? If so, we reckon, it'll be the only compensation Kenteris gets from the Athens Games.