Huge dose of silly sports

A troubled night was passed watching, first Gladiator and then, until 6am, the Olympic baseball final on the world's worst broadcaster, Channel 7. Judges in the Pretentious Sports Writing category for the next UK Press Gazette awards will take note when I remark that the two have more in common than might appear. Everyone knows that the victors write history but, perhaps, they also mould sports history.

When the Romans ruled the globe, the Thracians and Nubians found themselves taking a sudden interest in running away from spiked chariot wheels and fleeing tigers. Now the United States rules the world, and baseball (a sport taken seriously only by it, Cuba and Japan) joins such other American-bred throwbacks to life on Mount Olympus as the Madison cycle race on the IOC roster.

In fact, before anyone puts pen to paper, I think baseball has been an Olympic event for ages but I have no intention of allowing anything so tiresome as a fact to enforce a rewrite of the above. Not in this condition.

The general point is that the Games are full of events that have no place there, and there is nothing like a high fever that prevents attending the stadium to watch Dean Macey to enable close study of some of them.

Whoever suggested incorporating synchronised diving and what he was smoking at the time I don't know, but hats off anyway. That these divers can do what they do on their own is remarkable. In tandem, it is incredible.

While Macey's progress in the decathlon went unmentioned on Channel 7 - it is mid-afternoon here and still not a word; how droll to have come 12,000 miles to be unable to follow something I could have watched by walking three feet at home - the Chinese were showing almost supernatural brilliance from the 10-metre board. Sadly, for the enemies of horribly parochial Channel 7, both Australian teams took diving bronze, but it wasn't all bad news. By no means.

In possibly the silliest event of all, a tragedy over triumph story was unfolding. Any "walking" race like the women's 20km is a misnomer (it is, of course, the 20km Very Slow Running While Doing The Funky Chicken Race), the sole appeal being the riotous frequency of disqualifications. Why they happen no one has a clue. It's not like boxing. There, you can generally tell when one chap has eaten his opponent's ear or whacked him in the orchestras.

Here, a man in a garish shirt picks on someone at random - everyone is running, after all - lurches into the road and thrusts a red table tennis bat in their face.

So often and inevitably are people chucked out, it would save a lot of time and heartbreak if, before each Games, the chief judge waited at Mexico City airport and showed his bat to the team while they were checking in their luggage. Every time someone took the lead today, out they went. Oddly for one from such a ping pong-loving nation, the sight of the bat sent Liu, of China, into floods of tears. Perrone, of Italy, was more resolute. When she saw bat, she stopped for a moment but then jogged back into the lead, like the riderless horse in the Grand National, finally retiring near the end.

Not as near as new leader Jane Saville, of Australia. The poor lamb was 20 yards from the stadium, and must have been tingling with anticipation of the roar from 90,000 ecstatic spectators when the bat made its hateful, fateful appearance. The stadium fell so silent, they could have heard her sobs.

Wang, of China, crossed the line first, although she has probably been retrospectively disqualified by now like the Mexican man.

But no one can take the gold medals away from the her synchrodiving compatriots of both genders, and when the women collected theirs I had my second major learning experience of the day: the opening bars of the Chinese national anthem are identical to those of Bless This House theme tune. Amazing.

Whether I will ever learn what happened to Dean Macey is another matter.

Perhaps, if my mother would care to call after all...