Pension lawyer meets world: Anniversary Games

I attended the 1st Anniversary Games last year at the Olympic Stadium and it was a fine event. This year they still held it, but with the Stadium being renovated for West Ham, held a sort of street games in a temporary stadium in Horse Guards Parade. What a rip off. Truly woeful event. At this rate of decline next year's games will be formed of an egg and spoon race and a disability sack race.

To be fair, next year they will have the Olympic Stadium back, but frankly they just shouldn't have held this at all, or if they did they shouldn't have been so greedy. £75 for what were not even the most expensive seats, for an incredibly thin programme, split into afternoon and evening sessions to maximise ticket revenue. The few proper events were filled out with disability events, chosen essentially by whether we had a paralympic champion to put out. Unfortunately athletics now seems stuck with these events and no one (well except for me as I don't count) is allowed to point out the low objective quality of these competitions, nor that they are heavily influenced by the degree of handicap as much as the effort put in.

The simple point might be made is this one. How many able-bodied people are there between say 18-35? And now how many say, below the knee amputees in the same age-range? To achieve in athletics proper you have to compete with millions of others. In these disability events I imagine one is talking thousands - not thousands of athletes but just thousands of people who have the right affliction. Or to put it into a football context, it would be like watching Germany v Brazil, and then San Marino v Gibraltar, and being asked to accept them as equivalent quality contests, both being competed for by the best from their respective pools of talent.

However, the recent European Court opinion that obesity may be a disability should presumably open up the disability classes to a more populous and therefore higher level of competition, albeit with suitable accommodations. I look forward to the 100m for the morbidly obese - 8 huge blokes waddling down the track, mounds of flab swinging independently from their bodies. Obviously with a break after 50m on health grounds.

Anyway, much emphasis was put on the iconic venue. Which is indeed fair comment. But then again, Horse Guards Parade actually exists all the time, for free.

We were introduced to the new mascot. Still not quite making up for the lack of class athletes.

As the swathes of empty seats made clear.

The track events could only take 4 athletes at a time, so the programme could get stretched out further by having A and B races. Andy Turner here won the B race (A man I have met up close in European Championships. Nice bloke, but at 33 you know his best is behind him now. Hence he featured in B rather than A).

This is the disability women's long jump. At least the winner, right, is shaped like an athlete while our second string, left, just isn't (although she seems stronger in the actual leg count department).

The line-up for the 100m Hurdles A race. Minus the real start David Oliver who had pulled out, but still including world record holder Aries Merritt, centre in the day-glo yellow vest. He came a distant last the other three finishing in a line together in 11.24 seconds

Best event was probably the women's High Jump, a sizable high quality field, with a fine jump of 2m from Blanca Vlasic eventually taking it.

Isobel Pooley

Iwan Thomas does a valiant job at talking up the action, but that just makes it all the more annoying, as what one is watching doesn't live up to the hype. His description of the disability shot putters as "legends" would have been more believable if he didn't have to carefully peer at his script to read off their names, never clearly having heard of any of these "legends" before, like most of the rest of us. (Although the sight of one of them walking around carrying his spare leg strangely amused me.)

And you know you are in trouble when introducing the women's pole vaulters ("The best of the best." Err, no clearly not. Try looking at the rankings.) when the heights aren't being compared to world records, but to double-decker buses. This is dumbing down big-time. Similarly the disabled long jump was likened to jumping the length of black-cabs, as opposed to the length you would expect to see jumped at a decent school-sports day.

But probably the ultimate condemnation of the games as a sports event was when the video screen had to cut away from the men's long jump (minus its big draw Greg Rutherford who pulled out leaving Steve Tomlinson to beat a field with his main opponents being non-specialists, ie a triple jumper and a decathlete) in order to show members of the crowd kissing (sponsored by magnum ice-creams) which is obviously more important than watching sweaty blokes running and jumping.

In the big disability climax, Jonnie Peacock just lost the 100m for amputees below the knee. Starting a rush for the exits to get places to watch the free events down the Mall.

First up a women's mile.

Inevitable Ethiopian winner.

Followed by a men's 2 mile. As a spectator, obviously these street races are pretty hopeless. Apart from the few at the one end, the rest of us just see runners dashing past (for the 2 miles, four times) without seeing who wins, or is even in contention towards the end. But we knew it wouldn't be Mo Farah as he had of course pulled out with the upcoming commonwealth games.

And we finished off with a wheelchair race so that David Weir could win for Great Britain.

As even after all this it was still mid-afternoon so I went to the BP Portrait Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I would always recommend this for a trip. It never disappoints, and its free.