John Walker's Electronic House

I have always been very separate from nationalistic sporting support. Not because I’m some extremist leftie who thinks it’s some arch and oh-so-look-at-me thing to think, but because my brain just doesn’t get it. Arbitrary dotted lines on a round, round globe don’t logically differentiate humanity in ways that make me think I should want one of them to win at something more than another. The only rationale I could think of for picking an entire nation and wanting it to win would be based on some measure of national merit, and therefore I think there would be a few other countries that would come top of my list over the UK. Mere proximity to an athlete or team, no matter what cultural aspects I may happen to share, has never made sense for me as a means to care.

I’m also aware that sport is way more fun to watch if there’s one team you want to win more than the other. Baseball has long been the only sport that I’ve really engaged with, and I’ve relatively arbitrarily picked a National League and American League team to support. Investing in a team makes the process far more entertaining.

And so, with the Olympics happening in London, I find myself falling between these two fences.

I tend to describe myself as someone who doesn’t care about sport. But I think what I mean by that is that I don’t care about football, nor cricket, rugby or tennis. And since that’s all that’s ever shown on TV here, it pretty much rules out any active interest in the whole affair. I also thought I had no interest in the Olympics – I was very much hoping that Paris would win the bid, simply so we wouldn’t have the fuss, hassle, expense and noise it would inevitably bring. I was not looking forward to the inevitable massive expense, the endless, tedious media coverage of the build up to the event, nor the all-encompassing noise of it all throughout.

Then I watched the opening ceremony.

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