One thing that amazed about the British public in London 2012, was our ability to watch absolutely anything that was deemed by the Olympic committee as a sport, with thousands flocking to watch people walking a bit silly and horses doing Fred Astaire impressions.

When curiosity got the better of me last week, I watched a bit of dressage and all the horses, beautiful creatures that they were, carried a look that said, “What the fuck is this all about?” If they had seem my face, I am guessing the horses would have arrived at the same conclusion.

Also, at what point does a child look up at his father and say, “Dad, I want to be an Olympic walker”.

“I’ll give you Olympic walker you stupid child, now get to your room.”

What I did wonder after London 2012, was whether it was just us in the GB who would watch absolutely anything, or was this a global epidemic?

No, it’s just us.

The profit and loss accounts of the Rio Olympics will surely be like a credit card bill you don’t want to see, tucked under the clock on the mantlepiece waiting in vague hope for a miraculous cash injection to save the day. I can’t imagine that Rio could have be anything but a financial disaster.

The Olympic Stadium often resembled a Reading FC home game on a wet Tuesday

Watching Mo Farah win the 10,000 metres in front of a sea of blue plastic seats typified the Brazilian apathy towards the games and reminded me of a wet Tuesday at the Madejski Stadium. This highlighted that in general, Brazil is a nation that only really cares about football, as demonstrated when the public went into hysteria after clinching gold medal against a Germany team no-one outside of German youth football have ever heard of.

“THE DEMONS OF THE 7-1 BEATING BY GERMANY  IN THE 2014 WORLD CUP HAVE BEEN EXORCISED.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire…an Olympic gold medal in football does not eradicate a 7-1 World Cup semi-final beating in your own backyard.

So, after the euphoric two weeks in London 2012, the excellent Great Britain and Northern Ireland team have come away with a record tally of medals, but as wonderful as this is, I can’t help thinking that dressage, Kung fu (or whatever it is) and sailing are not of any real interest to anyone else, or at least get the same level of funding to make it any more than a hobby for the opposition.

Cycling, a former cyclist on Radio 5 said, has become a bit like Formula 1, where the best bike with a capable rider wins and we have the best bikes, apparently. I tried watching the velodrome stuff but I couldn’t understand why everyone wanted to be losing right up until the last few seconds when they would all go ballistic, so I gave up.

Well done to them all though, they thrashed everyone to the point they got suspected of cheating by the French, which always makes things more entertaining.

Watching the sailing is even more bizarre, and the only conclusion I could draw was that I am either a bit thick or the only people who really knew what was going on lived in Lymington.

Apart from the sea of blue seats making me say, “look at all those empty seats”  like I was an old record with the needle stuck, one thing that stood out yesterday was Nick Skelton winning the show jumping individual gold at the seventh time of asking.

The show jumping is easy to follow because if you clear a fence you are doing quite well but if you clip it and it falls off, you are basically fucked. This makes it far more simplistic to watch than Kung Fu or Sailing. Anyway, Nick, who seems like a decent chap, cleared all the fences and went into a six way play-off.

He went first in the speed play-off bit, cleared all the fences and did it quite quickly I was informed.  All the others followed and either went too slow or clipped the fences but the last bloke went off like his horse had a rocket up his arse and it appeared Nick’s dream of gold was over.

However, his rival clipped a fence and I rather unsportingly  punched the air happy in the knowledge that a man a decade older than me who had once snapped his neck in half,  had at last got a gold medal his years of endeavour undoubtedly deserved, not forgetting his 17 year-old horse of course.

Nick then went and got his medal and stood on the podium but guess what?

HE DIDN’T SING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!

Nick Skelton: Traitor?

This led me to think what the comment page on the Daily Mail website would have turned into had this been Mo Farah who had conducted such an act of treason, or even Scottish tennis player, Andy Murray.

One suspects that The Daily Mail readers, after calm reflection, would have recommended that hanging was too good for them.

Did I mention all the empty seats?