Sometimes in life you just get duped and there is nothing you can do about it. So it was with this Cup. Supposedly the top 8 athletics nations in the world competing, each putting forward there best competitor in each event, 8 points for the winner of and event down to 1 for coming last. Add up all the points and nation with the most collected the most expensive trophy ever - a platinum one.
The inaugural tournament was at the London Olympic stadium, on a nice sunny day.
I should note that a European version of this has been run for years, and there used to be a world cup too, but essentially with continent representative teams. However this one was a complete rip off. Sky high prices as if this was the equivalent of a world championships, but that is not what we got. Far from the best athletes on show, even the UK as host was often fielding third or fourth string athletes. Far from deciding the strongest nation in the world, this was a cup for whatever motley group of athletes fancied turning up, after the best had done a grand prix event instead. which paid better. And that was if they could bother to even put a full set of athletes out. China in particular didn't even enter for some events, so fields of 8 were often reduced to 7 or even 6.
If that wasn't bad enough my very expensive seat would, if it had been at the theatre, been discounted for an obscured view, as it was close to the front, but a dirty great barrier was set up for us to peer over.
And indeed my seat was actually in a position whereby, due to the curve of the stadium, the long/triple jump actually took place slightly behind me. I was not amused.
 |
| best view I could get of the triple jump with the highly irritating Iwan Thomas presenting the athletes |
No comments:
Post a Comment