the year of the sex olympics

I suppose it's obligatory to do a post at least tangentially related to the Olympics, so here goes. Tangentially, though, remember, so no complaining.

Firstly, here's the photo-finish picture (nicked from here) from Sunday's men's 100 metres final. No particular need to consult it to find out who won, nor indeed who was second, though it might have been useful in determining that convicted drugs cheat Justin Gatlin pipped non-convicted non-drugs cheat Tyson Gay (aka Tyson Homosexual) to the bronze medal by one hundredth of a second. However, it does provide a superb example of the phenomenon of "ski foot" I described earlier, modelled here by none other than Usain Bolt himself.

As you'll remember, this phenomenon happens when an athlete treads on the finishing line in the act of crossing it. Interestingly Bolt did the same thing when he won the World Championships (in a world record time of 9.58 seconds) in Daegu in 2009.

Now, no doubt a lot of the ladies will have enjoyed watching Usain Bolt run around in his close-fitting shorts, and there's no doubt that one of the joys of the Olympics is seeing the remarkable feats that the human body is capable of when trained specifically for certain events, however strange and esoteric those events might seem. Or, to put it another way, gawping at the startling lycra-clad loveliness on display by your chosen gender or genders. And it's not just the spectators; by all accounts the athletes are jumping each other at every opportunity as well, and why not.

Clearly the lovely Victoria Pendleton and the equally lovely Jessica Ennis (despite apparently being a big fat heifer) are high on most straight men's lists, as are the beach volleyballists in a much more general sense (i.e. the sense of not actually knowing any of the individuals' names). A couple of my personal favourites are Croatian high jumper and freaky lanky bug-eyed sexy space alien Blanka Vlašić, who sadly had to make a late withdrawal from the 2012 Games owing to injury, and toothy American sprinter Allyson Felix. Now I know what you're going to say: Felix is one of those tedious American sporting God-botherers, and probably (like her team-mate Lolo Jones) on some kind of tiresome virginity kick, so forget it. To which I reply along the same lines as the Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons:

You see, I have no intention of breaking down her prejudices. I want her to believe in God and virtue and the sanctity of marriage, and still not be able to stop herself. I want the excitement of watching her betray everything that's most important to her. Surely you understand that.

You probably found that quite disturbing, so let's move on. What you'll no doubt find even more disturbing though, as I did, is the shocking revelation that the whole London Olympics opening ceremony, which you thought was nothing more sinister than a sometimes lumpy but overall less embarrassing than we'd all feared cheesy showbiz spectacle, was in fact some kind of huge ritualised Satanic invocation designed to conjure up some sort of invasion of blood-sucking Illuminati space lizards. Or something like that, anyway, if you can make sense of David Icke's ramblings. Also, as if that were not plainly and self-evidently obvious enough, there are giant outlines of heraldic creatures literally carved into the landscape around London, hidden from view only through the flimsy device of the outlines being thinly disguised as roads, rivers and the like, and no doubt by some freaky Matrix-esque reptilian mind-control shit.

Lastly, speaking of the high jump, as I was a moment ago, reminds me that I was watching this fascinating video of the high jump event at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City earlier, 1968 being the year that Dick Fosbury revolutionised the sport by introducing the "Fosbury flop" to major athletics competition. It's fascinating to look back at a time not that long ago when everyone except Fosbury was doing the event in what seems like a horribly archaic and inefficient way, invariably using the straddle technique, like this. Despite it looking horrendous (no doubt partly due to its unfamiliarity), and the undoubted higher physical efficiency of the Fosbury flop (which allows the athlete's centre of gravity to pass under the bar rather than having to be hauled over it), it's mildly surprising that the world records using the two techniques are only ten centimetres apart, Javier Sotomayor's 2.45 metres with the flop beating Vladimir Yashchenko's 2.35 metres with the straddle.