Olympic TV View: Arise Dame Jo – dear old Bill would have been proud

Why, Joanne Cantwell asked, was Federico Bruno of Argentina finishing the marathon sideways? Was he, as some of us might have assumed, just a messer who wanted to get on the telly? Ah no, Jerry Kiernan explained, it was because some part of him was no longer working (his quads, or such like), so it was the only way he could complete the course. Like a crab.

And then there was the 50km walk when Con Murphy read out a tweet enquiring about why one of the competitors had brown stains down his legs, the tweeter possibly sorry he asked on being told the man had a “dicky tummy”.

It was poor old Yohann Diniz of France who stuffed a sponge in his shorts before collapsing, picking himself up again and wobbling himself to an eighth-place finish.

It’s at times like this you just have to acknowledge that being an Olympian is possibly beyond most of us, even if we had convinced ourselves we too could compete in, say, the weightlifting, rhythmic gymnastics or wrestling, all of which look easy- peasy.

Running looks harder. Certainly if you’re up against Mo Farah.

Treasure

“Mo, you are a treasure, you are more than a national treasure, you are the greatest sportsman Britain has ever had,” Brendan Foster emoted as the fella won his second Rio gold, completing the job of retaining his 5,000m and 10,000m titles.

“For services to athletics, he deserves to be Sir Mo Farah – arise, Sir Mo!”

Actually, for services to those who think they’re past it at 30, he should be knighted. To think he couldn’t get out of the 5,000m heats in Beijing when he was 25, and now he’s a quadruple gold winner at 33!

“I can’t believe it,” he told the BBC, which, as coincidence, was much the same reaction of the surprise 1,500m winner, Matthew Centrowitz becoming the first American to win at the distance in 108 years. “I literally kept screaming to everyone I know ‘are you kidding me?’” he hollered. A story so amazing it was almost hard to believe. A proud Olympics, then, for Alberto Salazar, the coach of Farah, Centrowitz and the fella who took bronze in the marathon, Galen Rupp. Whatever they’re doing at the Nike Oregon Project in Portland, it’s working a treat.

Farah’s gold was Britain’s 27th and 65th medal in all, which is roughly the number of times those with BBC Sport notifications on their phone have been woken in the middle of the night since Adam Peaty won their first gong in Rio several lifetimes ago. For people over 30, it’s much harder figuring out how to turn off notifications than turning them on.

We are, of course, happy for them, even if Clare Balding showed us that medal table on Sunday more times than we’ve had cups of tea, our lack of bitterness down to that fact that 120 of the nations that travelled to Rio 2016 will have a divil a medal, of any colour, to declare at customs on their return home. We have two, so we should feel blessed.

And any way, Britain paid out in or around £4.5 million per medal in funding, so there’s that, the Beeb sharing UK Sport’s conclusion that medals help inspire and create “a proud, healthy, active nation”. What they didn’t mention is that there was actually a fall in the number of Britons who play sport after London 2012, so the inspiration thing wasn’t working too well at all. Something to ponder.

If the inspiration thing works here, the watery bits in and around our island will be jammed with little Annalise Murphys and O’Donovan Brothers, which would be no bad thing, the trio providing us with our very loveliest Rio moments.

Jaw off the floor

Another star of the Greatest Show on Earth was Joanne Cantwell, whose time slot on RTÉ meant she was the one tasked with breaking all those OMG newsie bits from Rio, and having to pick her jaw off the floor to share the reports and then quiz whoever happened to be on the couch at the time.

Like Jerry Kiernan. Arise Dame Jo. If we did that knighting business.

She did it all with an easy authority too. You’d imagine Bill O’Herlihy would have approved. Still, it was hard not to miss the fella, especially when the O’Donovans did their thing. Billo’s chair would have been spinning so hard, he’d have been dizzy until Tokyo 2020.

All over, then. A sprinkling of magic here and there, but still, you’re left wondering if seeing should be believing.