Not applying for any tickets. More money to the IOC, An organisation that gives FIFA and the Mafia a run for its money over corruption and questionable practices, no way.
I will just watch any event that interests me on TV.

I'm finding it difficult to muster any kind of enthusiasm for an event that is..
a) More than a year away, and b) Likely to increase my tax commitments for little or no gain to the country's economy.
Bah, frikkin humbug.

Not applying for any tickets. More money to the IOC, An organisation that gives FIFA and the Mafia a run for its money over corruption and questionable practices, no way.
I will just watch any event that interests me on TV.

To: Lord Coe of Sycophant



Cur,



As a tax paying member of the public I feel the need to complain about this celebration of Greek culture you’re planning to hold during 2012.



I have a number of questions and observations about these so called ‘games’ and I would like full answers to all of them please. In the spirit of the dialogue being encouraged by The Right Ornery Ca’moron's Big Society, I have offered some of my own solutions to problems I envisage.



1. Track sports are dull, what are you going to do to make them more appealing to the PlayStation generation?



My solution to the tedium of watching a dozen skeletons run around a dog track, praying for something exciting to happen, like for instance someone falling over, is to guarantee some action! I therefore recommend that all the finals of all the track events happen at the same time, so you’d run the 100M, 400M, 800M, 1500M ya-de-ya-de-ya upto and including the 10000M. That ought to sort the excitement issue out, ensure a few thrills and spills and make the track event worth watching.



2. Similarly Field sports are lacking a certain ‘je ne sais pas’, how are you planning on sorting that out?



My answer is straightforward; mix the javelin and high jump events together, this will give the javelin throwers someone to aim at and the high jumpers more incentive to jump higher. It would be logical to merge the shotput and long jump, and also the discus and the hoppity-skippity-triple-jump on a similar basis.



3. Hurdling, Relay and Steeple Chasing, were a good first attempts at enriching running sports, but what are the next steps?



Simple Seb! What you do in the case of hurdling is set fire to the hurdles! That’ll make them run faster and jump higher and further; very exciting. With the relay, I suggest exchanging the baton for a live chicken this will bring a “It’s a Knockout" vibe to the proceedings which I believe the X-Factor generation would enjoy. Finally, the Steeple Jump; what you need is a Beecher’s Brook type of fence, like the Grand National...this will be trickier to handle as we’d want to hide the man with the pistol ‘dispatching’ fallers from the onlookers as this would be unbroadcastable.



4. Sailing and Rowing, need a facelift.



I think the real problem with these ‘sports’ is that they aren’t, they are hobbies a bit like fishing. In fact fishing is the United Kingdoms most popular sport and isn’t even featured in the modern recreation of the Olympic Games, this despite the fact that TV shows such as “A Passion for Angling” are some of the most popular shows on The Discovery Channel. The answer is clear, convert the sailing fleet into a fishing fleet...that’ll show Britain's maritime heritage and prove sport is accessible by all. We could use the canoes, kayaks and rowing boats to ferry the catch ashore or alternatively put flowers in them and place them on the dual carriage ways and roundabouts of Weymouth as decorations - very festive!



5. Equality in Sports is not being promoted in fact active discrimination is taking place, what is your position on this?



I hate discrimination of all kinds and I believe that everyone man, woman, black, white, old, young, fat, thin, bent, straight, abled, disabled et al should compete equally. I therefore propose that everyone competes in the same events and that the gender split and the Paralympics be abolished. A simple handicapping system should be implemented, this would prevent for instance a wheel-chair user gaining unfair advantage in the down hill sections of the marathon and tall people from gaining long-legged advantage in the hurdles and old people gaining advantage in water sports.



6. Equestrian sportsman/woman, is it time to consider who is the sportsman in these activities?



It seems to me that in all the equestrian sports it’s not the rider who is the athlete, it’s the bloody horse! Why are we allowing horses to muscle in on human competitions, after all they are bound to be faster they’ve got four legs! I think the game is up on this Seb, the public can see straight through this thinly veiled attempt to let the royal family and aristocracy parade about. Time to get the dumb animals out of the Olympics (and the horses)!



7. Stadia, what are we to do with them afterwards and why did we build them in the first place?



It seems to me Lord Coe that you and your sporting cronies have lead us up the garden path me old mate. Like millions of others, I have caught you out! We didn’t need any more track and field stadia because, wait for it..... it’s boring and no one wants to go and watch ordinarily! Sure you’ll sell your tickets for 2012, even if you have to give them away, but we’ll be stuck with white elephants that no one will use. I propose that all track and field stadia be demolished and left as an industrial wasteland area until normal domestic expansion reaches East London, on the proviso that no Football or Rugby clubs (who have supporters) want them, in which case they can be sold on at market rate.



8. Swimming and poolside sports suffer in a similar way to track events – can these be reworked too?



There is nothing better than popping down the local swimming pool, dropping the kids off and then going out with your mates, in the full knowledge that the little sods can’t ring you for a couple of hours. This sport is truly accessible to us all. To make it more exciting and even more accessible, I believe that all Olympic Pools should be about half the current length, full of dull lane-swimmers and children dropping in on the athletes’ heads out of various flumes. To make the experience even more real world, ensure that 2 or 3 gallons of urine is placed in the pool before the race commences and that all umpires are replaced with spotty college leavers (must have Life Saver ironically Printed on their tee-shirt). Oh, diving.....! Sorry! Have you been to Acapulco? They’re the athletes, enough said!!



9. Gymnastics... what is the point of this?



The gym sports; beam, pommel horse, parallel bars, still rings and most of all the floor disciplines are all fine and well, but the clue is in the name.... _Gym_nastics; things one does WHILST training in the GYM. If we’re going to have these Olympic events where are the; running machine, X-trainer, Exercise Bike and Rowing Machines? It’s the equivalent in motor-racing of watching the practice laps (ok bad analogy!) but still bloody pointless... I suggest the all gymnasts be made to pick a proper sport and get out of the gym they have trained long enough!



10. The Marathon, my least favourite so called sport. I believe it needs to return to its roots, how will you achieve this?



The modern Athens Marathon commemorates the run of the soldier Pheidippides from a battlefield at the site of the town of Marathon, Greece, to Athens in 490 B.C. Legend has it that Pheidippides delivered the momentous message "Niki!" ("victory"), then collapsed and died... Since in the end Pheidippides carked it, before his brother-in-arms beat him to death for being smug, I propose that all successful Marathon runners for the 2012 are taken ‘out back’ and beaten soundly by a detachment of Greek soldiers.



I hope that you will take my suggestions as they are meant and would ask that in future a referendum is held before squandering Billions on a games that some of us didn’t want or ask for.



Regards



Lee White

Keeper of Truths – Rabelaisian Society of Great Britain & The Isle of Wight



PS> Cycling isn’t a sport either, it’s transport.



PPS> Neither are fencing and shooting, participants should be arrested for having offensive weapons.



PPPS> Don’t even get me started on bloody Ping-Pong!! What were you thinking???