Olympic Horse Pummeling

Still on the subject of the Olympics, I must admit that for a minute on Sunday I thought that they had introduced a radial new sport to the Games. I could have sworn that I heard the TV commentators say that a British competitor had won a bronze medal after his horse pummeling. I immediately had visions of blokes in gym kit beating up horses. Obviously, they'd start with ponies in the eats, before working up to full-size horses in the semi-finals. Maybe, I mused, the final consists of four blokes having to give a bloody good hiding to a series of successively larger horses, with gold going to whoever could take down a shire horse. But then I realised that they were talking about gymnastics and had been commending the British medallist on his horse pommel routine.

Before leaving the subject of the Olympics, I really must register my disappointment at the UK's lack of medals in the archery events. Even the French did better than us. The French, for God's sake! It really makes a mockery of Agincourt! Not to mention Robin Hood. Whatever happened to the good old days when all able-bodied Englishmen had to do archery practice every Sunday? Maybe that's the trouble - its become too elitist. Maybe we need to encourage more working class participation, not to mention getting young people interested in the sport. I was thinking that perhaps we could encourage the use of longbows by gangs, instead of guns. A spate of drive-by archery attacks might be just what we need to revitalise the sport .