Golden day for the newest silly sport

Never, ever throw away a superlative. Only yesterday, I described distance walking as the silliest Olympic event, on the grounds - convincing then, albeit seen through the prism of a fever - that everyone runs all the time and should therefore be disqualified within three seconds of the start.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the new champion of Olympic silliness, sailing. In fairness to this venerable and demanding sport, it's not the actual sailing that's preposterous but its status as a spectator sport: to the long-standing aficionado as much as to the novice, it is utterly impossible to follow in any way.

You can tell nothing by watching a race from the shore, since the boats sail out of lanes, or from another boat; nothing by watching on television and absolutely nothing by staring at screens filled with charts of times and positions.

In the press centre at Rushcutter's Bay, scores of us spent the morning staring at rows of figures - supposedly corresponding to something sea-related but reminiscent solely of logarithm tables. No one could comprehend this, with or without a slide rule or the NASA computer. And no one does.

You can gauge how amazingly baffled everyone has been from the ever louder and more neurotic buzzing of hacks frantically trying to pick each other's brains. The nice German woman opposite says her Dutch friend was absolutely sure that our own Ben Ainslie retained his lead over Robert Scheidt of Brazil in the Laser Class going into the final race. On the other hand, the British Olympic Association press officer believe him to be trailing. Both may have been correct. Or neither.

For a while, the event appeared to make sense when the two raced alone at the back of the field, the Briton zig zagging around like a lunatic trying to take the Brazilian out in much the way Michael Schumacher took Damon Hill out of an infamous formula one world championship decider.