Taking it as a given that Bradley Wiggins and Ben Ainslie will be knighted (four gold medals seems to be the benchmark for receiving a KBE – Pinsent and Hoy were both touched by the Queen’s sword after winning a quartet of Olympic golds) what would it be like if they all acted like ‘real’ knights? Like proper, dragon slaying, King Arthur style knights. What if these Olympians, Wiggo, Ainslie, Hoy, Pinsent and Redgrave, were transported back to the time of King Arthur like the 90′s kids’ cartoon King Arthur and the Knights of Justice? I don’t want to sound patronising as I’m sure everyone reading this is completely au fait with the plot of this average American animation but just in case you’re not… due to the evil sorceress Queen Morgana trapping King Arthur and the knights of the round table in the Cave of Glass, Merlin, who is unable to save them himself, searches the timeline for suitable replacement knights to rescue them and decides that an American football quarterback called Arthur King (what a funny coincidence!) and his team the New England Knights are the perfect all American heroes to save those pathetic medieval Englishmen who were clumsy enough to get themselves trapped in a cave made of glass. Strange that Merlin had the magical powers to look forward in time to bring an entire football team back to the past but not to break a glass cave. Was the kingdom of Arthur stone free?  Anyway, imagine Merlin thought that the British Olympic knights were a better bet for round table success. (Lord Coe would be King Arthur. Obvs.)

Firstly, they’d be split into departments, with the cyclists on horseback and the rowers and sailors in boats. Wiggo would chase down people on his horse and then forget to lock them away or whatever and just go get off his face on mead. Ainslie, judging by his ‘You don’t want to make me angry’ line when talking about the Danish sailor telling him to do a penalty turn in one of the races, would get really angry with all the invading Viking sailors (did Vikings invade at the time of King Arthur? Actually why am I worrying about the historical accuracy of a ridiculous blog post based on a timetravelling fictional kids cartoon, itself based on a myth? Anyway…) and chase them back to Scandinavia. So they’re both out of action.

Redgrave would be on his first shift of  moat patrol and after a particular hard chase of some ne’erdowell trying to enter the castle, he would exit his boat with old man groans and say ‘If you ever see me get into a boat again, shoot me.’ When he did next get into the boat, drawn by an insatiable need to chase down medieval ne’erdowells in moats, a castle archer, not understanding the modern subtleties of Sir Steve’s humour, takes his request literally and shoots him. Losing his fellow paddle brother leaves Matthew Pinsent paralysed with grief and now the whole of the Olympic knights water force is out of action.

So that would leave Chris Hoy but the man from Edinburgh would end up siding with the invading Scots (again loose with history here but we’re talking about a fictional king and his super awesome knights and a magical wizard. They clearly didn’t exist. Or did they? No, they definitely didn’t. But did they though? No, there’s absolutely no historical evidence for King Arthur. The stories come from folklore and medieval romances and  they absolutely definitely did not exist in reality….. But maybe they did?) and that would scupper the whole saving the real King Arthur operation.  So there you go.

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