I think my Olympic cynicism has been well documented enough that we needn't dwell on it.
For the record, I found myself watching some of it, and it was entertaining.
But I couldn't reliably tell you which parts, because they weren't all that important to me. (Also, it's 3am and I'm drunk. Suck it up, readers, you should be used to that.)
As most people who know me will attest, I follow no sports at all, with the exception of boxing.
I love boxing. I think it's a pure distillation of sport, in the same way that wrestling would be if it weren't a) choreographed American horseshit or b) dull homo-erotic grappling, depending on the version you see.
I have respect for tennis, for the same reasons as boxing. Two people compete and the better man (or, officially as of this Olympics, woman) wins. I like sports distilled down to the personal level. You either beat the other guy, or you don't. There's no blaming the goalie.
So as a boxing fan, you'd expect me to be happy about Anthony Joshua's last minute gold-medal win in the heavyweight final.
You'd expect me to be, but I'm not.
Because I've seen this shit happen before.
First and foremost, I'm not knocking Anthony Joshua. I physically couldn't. Even a solid right hand on my part would probably only inconvenience him for a few milliseconds.
What bothers me, though, is that I can remember the last time we had a great heavyweight Olympian, and his name was Audley Harrison.
Audley Harrison was, quite simply, everything you could ever want out of a heavyweight fighter. If you sat down with a pad and a pencil and designed a heavyweight boxer, he was exactly what you'd end up with. Six feet five inches, with arms like an ape, he had the height and reach to launch awkward, long-range attacks that were hard to avoid. At the same time, he had big, broad shoulders that denoted natural physical strength, letting you know that he was capable of heavy power shots whenever he felt the urge to land them.
In 2000, his ludicrous physical advantages secured him a gold medal in the Sydney Olympics, and the BBC fell over themselves (in a situation that presumably led to the brief creation of the CBB and the BCB) to offer Audley money and fame in exchange for exclusive rights to his fights, as well as his commentary on other bouts. He was given a million pounds straight out of the gate.
What nobody had noticed, sadly, was that Audley Harrison was about as brave and talented in a real boxing match as Scooby Doo would have been in a scene from "The Exorcist."
Audley Harrison, put bluntly, was scared of fighting.
For a huge, powerfully built boxer, this was at best an unusual character flaw. After he turned professional, straight after Sydney, he had a few fights with easy opponents. I can't recall the names, but neither can anyone else.
Audley, already, was picking easier fights than a mid-eighties Jim Davidson. He probably asked his manager at one point if Ghandi was available to spar. Audley Harrison attacked more bums than hemorrhoids. He couldn't get enough of easy, under-qualified fighters. It was Joe Louis' "bum of the month tour" without any of Louis' skill or, y'know, heavyweight championship belts.
The fans quickly tired of this. Commentating on Harrison's meteoric rise to prominence and immediate lack of drive, the great Marvin Haggler pointed out that "It's hard to get out of bed and run in the morning when you're wearing silk pyjamas."
The BBC dropped Harrison about 0.9 milliseconds after the fans did, but he managed a second career phase; not content with being a disappointment, he managed to get publicity as a figure of outright ridicule.
At 29, he was no spring chicken in boxing terms when he won the gold in Sydney. With a string of bums under his belt, he had, in the words of Kris Kristofferson, got nothing but "older and around."
It was at this point that Audley decided to start playing the "there's still time" card, insisting that, despite his advancing years, he still had time to be the heavyweight champion of the world.
What followed was a tedious and embarrassing litany of.... well, of tedium and embarrassment. He fought a few times, never looked dangerous or hungry, but was still genetically gifted enough to stay afloat.
In 2009, he won the reality TV series "Prizefighter", largely because he was six-feet five and had a massive reach and some professional experience. The series was a British take on the American show "The Contender," which was masterminded by Sly Stallone, a man who, in the words of the great Jerry Boyd "couldn't even spell 'fight.'"
With that loose victory on his side, and at the age of 39, Audley Harrison went on to engineer a farcical display against David Haye.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that Audley Harrison was officially recorded as landing one punch in the entire, three round fight.
Three rounds. Nine minutes, with breaks.
And he only landed one punch.
I'm not exaggerating when I say I could do better.
I'm also not exaggerating when I say that David Haye was probably hit more times with a speed bag in training than he was by Audley Harrison during the actual fight he was training for.
To make my position clear: Audley Harrison is such a pussy that if you ever shook his hand, you would legally qualify as a gynaecologist. He's so afraid of punches that he can't drink Um-Bongo with his eyes open. He panics so much at the sound of a bell ringing that he once soiled himself during Songs of Praise.
And he is also, lest we forget, our last heavyweight boxing gold medallist.
So, to sum up: Good work, Anthony Joshua. I congratulate you on your medal, and wish you all the success in the world.
But I'm not getting excited just yet, because Jesus Christ, look at what became of the last guy that was in your position:
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