What Olympic tickets did you get? I luckily managed to get 5 tickets to Greco-Roman wrestling. I’m so excited. I’ve always been such a big fan of Greco-Roman wrestling…

Ridiculous. What I don’t understand is why people are desperate to get tickets for sports they have previously had no interest in. Is it just because you can say you went? ‘Yes, I went to the Olympics. I saw the heats of the shooting.’ Brilliant. With the price of the tickets, that’s a pretty expensive sentence to say. No matter how many times you say it. But enough of all this misanthropy! Some of the Olympic sports are actually good. Like these ones: (We’ll get through these quickly then get back to the misanthropy and say which Olympic sports are rubbish.)

The Best Olympic Sports

Gold: Ping Pong

Everyone loves ping-pong (he means table tennis – serious Olympics loving ed.). Ping-pong (again he means table tennis – serious Olympics loving ed.) is fun to play and everyone’s played it so there’s more recognition of what’s going on when you watch it. And when you see how fast they hit it you realise you how good those ping-pong players are. (Stop calling it ping-pong! – serious Olympis loving ed.) Plus, it can look quite funny. It’s ping-pong on the telly.

Silver: Handball

Guess what the national sport in Denmark is? No, it’s not handball you fool, what country would ever have handball as their national sport for godssake?  The national sport is of course football but they do like handball. A lot. (Here are two Danish Handball facts: 1. There exists a Handball Manager computer game series in Denmark. 2. Peter Schmeichel started as a handball keeper before switching to football.) Which is why when London won the bid to host the games and the British handball team had been dissolved since the 80s, the British Handball Development Academy was set up in Denmark. To find players an ad was released asking for unemployed, athletic, young British men to come live in basic, shared accommodation in Denmark and earn a few hundred quid a month to learn to play a game they’d probably never watched before. Those men are the British handball team. So in that respect, the British Handball team are a little like  the Jamaican bob-sleigh team in ‘Cool Runnings’! Except probably a lot less entertaining. But handball is still fun! It’s like a cross between basketball and five -a-side football. Or one of those games you make up by the side of the pool when you’re on holiday but played by people who take it far too seriously.

Bronze: Basketball

Unlike the other two major US sports – baseball and American football – people outside of the US (or in baseball’s case, outside of North and Central America, Japan and Korea) actually play basketball. And unlike baseball and American football, basketball doesn’t go on forever and isn’t incredibly dull to watch. I know that in every Olympic sport the world’s best players are competing but some of those athletic guys and gals are hardly household names. Certainly in my household anyway. (I tested this by reading out the names of all the competing archers, trampolinists, weightlifters and water polo players to my flat mate last night and he hadn’t heard of any them. He also repeatedly told me to shut up because it went on for over two hours.)  Whereas all those NBA stars are going to be playing in competitive games in London and that’s pretty exciting.

The Worst Olympic Sports

Joint Gold: Tennis and Football

The Olympics should be the pinnacle of the sports that are included. This is most certainly not the case with tennis and football. Footballers and tennis players don’t really care about the Olympics. If you said to Andy Murray that he could only win one title in his career, Wimbledon or the Olympic gold, he’s not going to take the medal. However, this year, with the fact that there’s a unified Great British football team gives the football a little more interest. Similarly, rugby, should never be in the Olympics, though Sevens could be fun. It is in the Commonwealth games. You could also argue that basketball shouldn’t be in the Olympics for the same reasons, it does have a World Championship every four years after all, but that doesn’t get anything like the international coverage the Olympic competition gets. So if you were to argue that basketball shouldn’t be in the Olympics for this reason, you would be wrong sir.

Bronze: Beach Volleyball

Don’t be a perv.

All other sports in the Olympics are somewhere in between. SPORT FACT!

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