He's 70 and he knows it: Hiroshi Hoketsu rides again

Septuagenarian Hiroshi Hoketsu seems to be enjoying his time in London.  "So what?", we hear you cry.  "Another slow-moving elderly tourist blocking our Tube exits and documenting every insignificant second of his trip with his unnecessarily professional camera?  Who cares?"  Well, he isn't, and you should.  Because Hoketsu-san is COMPETING AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES.

Let's try to put that in context.  You probably know someone older than 50, right?  Are they competing at the Olympics?  ARE THEY?!  No.  They're not.  And if either you or they think they are, stop reading this and seek professional help.

Let's try to put that in context a bit better and with a little less shouting.  Hiroshi Hoketsu first competed at the Olympics in Tokyo in 1964, finishing 40th in showjumping.  He finished ninth in team dressage and 35th in individual dressage as the oldest competitor at Beijing 2008.  When he first competed at the Olympics, we hadn't landed on the moon or invented the internet.  When he first competed at the Olympics, Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" topped the charts and there were only two Bond films.   When he first competed at the Olympics, Elvis was thin.  And alive.

Taking part in the individual dressage on Saturday - not as a novelty, not out of pity or sympathy, but having qualified by right - Hoketsu-san and his horse Whisper apparently finished a very respectable 17th out of 25.  We say "apparently" because dressage is far too boring for owls to watch safely.  Still, if he competes again in Rio, he'll break a record set in 1920 and become the oldest Olympian ever.  If he achieves that feat at the frankly inconceivable age of 75, we hope you'll join us in quietly raising a warm ceramic cup of sake in his honour.   Kampai.

And the award for best Olympic analysis goes to: Samuel L. Jackson?!

Samuel L. Jackson is our new favourite Olympic commentator.

He seems to have taken a short sabbatical from wrangling snakes and quoting silly Bible passages for narrative convenience.  For two weeks, he's a patriotic superfan jacked up on wall-to-wall sport and he's not afraid to nail his colours to the mast.  Take a look at these highlights from his verified Twitter account and see for yourself.


"PHELPS WALKS em' DOWN!!! Came & got that ASS! OLYMPIC RULER!! Last race Maggie!! MOSTMUFFAQUATICPFUQQAH of ALL TIME! GOLD!!! Go USA!"


"Awwwright!!! We bout to get some fairer sex IRON RAISIN'!"


"Men's Rapid Fire Pistol is Off da Chain! The glasses, da Gats...no Recoil! Steady hands & nobody's holdin' their shit SIDEWAYS!"


"SERENA WINS GOLD!!!! Bizzy cleaning off the toe of her shoe afta kicking ALL that Sharapova ass! Go USA!"


"Dog eat Dog Ping Pong match! Ball scrapes edge of the table, blind Judge blows the call! Dude won Anyway! China vs China."


"Now hold up, the Russian girl FELL OFF the Beam, Ally stayed up...Bronze for....WTF?! Tim's prolly happy, jeez all up in that Russian Ass!"


"Well, sometimes the Weights fight back! Chinese champion OUT!! Weight Wasn't Even trying to be Lifted!!"


"Women's 8 HiOctane rowing! Coxswain looks like a hype gig! GOLD ALL AROUND! Go USA!!"


"Awrite, who knows the rules in this Handball shit?! It's fast & furious though!"


"WAIT A MINUTE! WTF?! Badfuqqinminton players tossed for THROWING games?! Really? Strategy My Ass! World Class WUSSES!!!"


Our personal favourite?  No muthafuggling contest.


"Like I said before, those BRITS are some PEDALIN', RECORD BREAKIN', MUTHACYCLINPHUCCAS!! Congrats UK!"

Federer foreverever(er): why we can't support Andy Murray tomorrow

Here at Sporting Owl towers, we're huge fans of British sport and we've cheered all our athletes relentlessly throughout these first eight days of Olympic competition. Despite our inclination toward cynicism and snark, we're so proud to see our little islands standing tall in third place on the medal table - notwithstanding that it can't possibly last once Russia starts hoovering up athletics gold like a magnetic anteater. To have won ten gold medals already is a staggering achievement for our country.

There is, however, one event where we're desperately hoping that Britain will not win. That's right: NOT win. Or lose, if you prefer. Do feel free to imagine us descending to a hushed whisper at this point as we dodge raging lynch mobs with customised pitchforks made of souvenir Olympic torches strapped together with leftover Jubilee bunting. That event is the men's singles tennis.

Roger Federer and Andy Murray have battled through to the final with equal measures of skill and determination. We've been quite taken aback by all the evidence that the tennis multimillionaires competing at London 2012 actually do care about the Olympics. We'd always believed that Olympic gold was seen by top tennis players as a bonus ranking a distant fifth below the four Grand Slam tournaments in their ambitions for each Olympic year. However, it's hard to sustain that belief in the face of the two longest matches in Olympic tennis history, with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga scraping past future star Milos Raonic 25-23 in the deciding set and Federer himself edging out Juan Martin del Potro 19-17 in their semi-final clash. So let's answer that question once and for all: these players are desperate to win Olympic gold.

One man has more reason than most to crave victory, and not just because it's his birthday on Wednesday. Roger Federer has won almost everything there is to win in his chosen sport. He was ranked number one in the world at junior level, won junior Wimbledon in singles and doubles and has since won 17 Grand Slam singles titles, six Tour finals and Olympic doubles gold in Beijing. He's topped the world tennis rankings for almost 300 weeks throughout his career, regaining that mantle at the grand old age of 30 by winning his record-equalling seventh Wimbledon title last month. His graceful single-handed backhand is a baroque masterpiece which for a decade has embellished and illuminated a sport now dominated by prosaic power and stamina. Federer is the greatest sportsman of his generation, outstripping the achievements of Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan on and off the court with consummate ease and elegance. There's just one thing missing from his unprecedented resumé: an Olympic singles gold medal. Tomorrow he can put that right.

While we felt his histrionics at the Wimbledon final were a little selfish in light of Federer's achievements, we do have a bit of a soft spot for Andy Murray - honest. It's just here, right below our left wing. We're very glad he's made it to the final (especially after his lamentable performance in Beijing), and we're excited to see him scything through the mixed doubles draw with Laura Robson. We fervently hope he comes away from London 2012 with two well-deserved medals round his neck, and we'd love to see him capture Olympic singles gold in Rio. But try as we might, we can't bring ourselves to cheer for him tomorrow. While Federer is the benchmark against which all future champions will be judged, we can only imagine Andy Murray being remembered in 30 years as the answer to an obscure pub quiz question.

So it's a heartfelt ALLEZ ROGER! from the Owl. Because we've loved watching him play for twelve years. Because he deserves this. Because he's simply the best.

Welcome to the velodrome: how track cycling has changed since Beijing

I wrote a little piece on my blog a couple of days ago to try to answer a few questions about the differences between track cycling at Beijing 2008 and track cycling at London 2012.

Why can't Chris Hoy ride in the individual sprint?

Where have the individual pursuit and madison events gone?

And why won't Great Britain be able to emulate their success from Beijing, no matter how many world records they break?

All the answers are here.

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The Olympic track cycling has just started at the velodrome. It's a beautifully designed building and a fitting tribute to all the success that our cyclists have achieved since the state-of-the-art Manchester velodrome was built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

Great Britain won seven gold medals, three silvers and two bronzes on the track in Beijing, including three golds for Chris Hoy and two for Bradley Wiggins. To put that into perspective, we won seven of 10 events and 12 of 30 medals available. Of our entire track cycling team, only Mark Cavendish failed to win a medal, and (as most of you know) he's since become the most successful road cyclist in the world. That's an astonishingly dominant performance by any measure. Even more so when you consider that the prestigious men's 1000m race - at which Britain's Jason Queally and Chris Hoy had won the previous two Olympic golds - was surprisingly cut from the Olympic programme prior to Beijing.

Repeating that performance was always going to be a difficult task, especially with several other countries increasing investment in the sport to try to catch up. But changes introduced by the UCI (the sport's governing body) at the behest of the IOC have made it an impossible one.

Firstly, each country can now only enter one rider or team for each event. This immediately means that no country will ever emulate our Beijing feat of winning more medals than there were events. The main headache this created for the GB selectors was who to pick for the men's sprint, since Jason Kenny and Chris Hoy would both be favourites to win medals. The selectors have picked Kenny on the basis of his better recent form, so Chris Hoy cannot now defend one of his three Olympic titles. As mentioned above, this is now the second time that Hoy has been prevented from defending an Olympic title.

Secondly, several events have been cut from the Olympic programme. This is an unfortunate consequence of the admirable objective of enabling women to compete in just as many track cycling events as men. Rather than adding women's equivalents of the existing men's events, the UCI have been forced to remove some events to avoid increasing the total number and thereby diluting the value of a gold medal (as the IOC would see it). The men's madison has been cut, along with the men's and women's individual pursuit events (previously won for Britain by Chris Boardman, Bradley Wiggins and Rebecca Romero) and the men's and women's points races. These events have been replaced with the women's team sprint, the women's team pursuit, the women's keirin and the men's and women's omnium races. For those of you new to track cycling, the omnium is a hexathlon of disciplines aimed at rewarding all-round cycling skill where competitors tackle a short time trial, a flying lap race, a points race, elimination race, pursuit race and scratch race.

It's worth remembering that these changes are great news for some riders - Victoria Pendleton now has the chance to ride for three gold medals rather than one, and to translate the staggering dominance she's exhibited at recent World Championships into the Olympic arena in front of an adoring home crowd. But it's a real shame that administrators couldn't have found a way to retain traditional events such as the individual 1,000m and 4,000m races while also introducing long overdue equality. Even taking into account that there are also a few mountain bike, BMX and road cycling events at London 2012, it must be pretty devastating for track cyclists to see swimmers and track and field athletes competing in 34 and 48 events respectively. I'm certainly not arguing that any sport should be structured to ensure that Great Britain wins as many medals as possible. I'm arguing that the sport should be properly represented at the Olympic Games, and that we should be able to see athletes competing to become Olympic champions in the most prestigious track cycling races.

In short, don't blame Team GB's track cyclists when we fall short of our Beijing medal tally. Blame murky manoeuvrings behind the curtain of sporting politics.

Mean Girls finish first

We're delighted to report that Regina George won her first round 400m heat at the Olympic Stadium this morning.

Well done, Regina!  That is soooo fetch!

[Editor's note: stop trying to make fetch happen]

Check out edited highlights from Regina's career to date below.  Rest assured that The Sporting Owl will be watching Regina's progress like... well, like an owl.  But an owl that wishes it was a hawk.

Track cycling day one: a tale of two rules

Two gold medals were on offer on day one of competition at the velodrome in the men's and women's team sprint races.  Both British teams set world record times that would have advanced them to the gold medal race and guaranteed at least a silver medal under normal circumstances.  Despite a controversial incident in their first round, the British men produced a brilliant display in the final to thrash world champions France and snatch gold.  But the British women were relegated to last place in their second round and missed out on the medals.

Let's take the British women's team of Jess Varnish and Victoria Pendleton first.  Why were they relegated?  In the women's team sprint, the two riders on the team start at the same time and complete two laps, with the first rider (who sets the pace on the first lap) peeling off as that lap ends.  At the end of the first lap, the first rider must still be ahead of the second rider when they both cross the line.  If the second rider has already overtaken the first rider, that constitutes an illegal change and the team is relegated to last place in that round of the competition.   The equivalent situation in athletics would see a relay team disqualified for completing a baton change after the end of the change box.  In this case, Pendleton had already overtaken Varnish by the end of the first lap.  The margin was extremely small and the commissaires officiating the race do have some discretion in applying the rule, but replays confirmed that their decision was correct.  In the gold medal race, China also performed an illegal change and were therefore relegated to last place in that round, taking silver instead of gold as a consequence.  While we naturally feel extremely sorry for Varnish and Pendleton - Varnish because that was her only event, and Pendleton because this is probably her last competition - they accidentally broke a rule and should be treated the same way as any other team.

Turning to the British men's team of Philip Hindes, Jason Kenny and Chris Hoy, we need to start by describing what happened in their first round.  Hindes' bike seemed to come out of the start gate at a strange angle and he wobbled about for a few metres before falling to the track.  The commissaires decided that this was a mechanical failure and ordered a restart.  The team (and particularly Hindes) rode superbly three times after that and won gold.

So far, so good.  Nothing controversial about that, you might think.  If anything, performing so well after the shock of an unfortunate mechanical failure makes their achievement all the more impressive, doesn't it?  Well, perhaps not.

When asked about the incident by the BBC's Jill Douglas straight after the final, 19-year-old Hindes answered that he had crashed deliberately.  He explained that the team had planned for a poor start and decided that he would crash to make sure that a restart was awarded.  Or, in his words: "I crashed, I did it on purpose just to get the restart, just to get the fastest ride.  It was all planned really."  So let's be quite clear about this.  There was nothing wrong with his bike and he decided to try to void their first attempt to give the team another chance to record a better time.  This wasn't simply a case of exaggerating a mechanical problem to attract the attention of the commissaires: there was no such problem.  Hindes dived.

At the team's press conference after collecting their medals, Hindes told a very different story after what we can only assume was a crash course in media training.  He denied that he had deliberately fallen and claimed that he had simply lost control.  Hindes was born in Germany and only moved to England to join the British Cycling academy in October 2010.  Perhaps inevitably, the official line distributed by British Cycling was that Hindes' post-race comments were somehow lost in translation.

Based on Hindes' initial response and reported comments from other teams, we'll proceed on their assumption that he crashed on purpose.  By the letter of the rules of track cycling, no rule was broken and the commissaires acted correctly.  So while we might feel that Hindes' actions (which appear to have been dictated by the team) were morally wrong because they were designed to gain an unfair advantage, sanctions could not have been imposed.  The other teams have all accepted the result of the event (though the French team has called for the rules to be changed in future) and the governing body has confirmed that the result cannot be reexamined.

Now, we don't believe that the crash necessarily affected the overall result.  It happened in the first qualification round, where the best eight times advance to the second round.  Based on the expected performances of the other teams, we think Team GB would probably still have qualified comfortably even if Hindes had followed through with his bad start and completed the ride.  But what if Hindes had felt the need to crash in the second round, or even in the final?  In any case, we just wish Hindes hadn't been asked to crash so we could focus on celebrating the team's stellar record-breaking performances in later rounds.

Two races.  Two actions which resulted in an unfair advantage for British teams - one accidental, one deliberate.  The former was punished, the latter was not.  In our view, the strategy which seems to have been employed by the British team would not be accepted in any other sport.  Imagine the farcical scenes if every other team also decided to crash if they thought there was any chance of producing a better start second time around.  Track cycling rules must be changed to ensure that the sport does not descend to the level of public contempt and irrelevance that Olympic badminton has recently achieved.

Hometown decisions at London 2012? No thanks!

Being an owl, we naturally feel drawn to the nocturnal goings-on at London 2012.  This might have been apparent as we wearily reported on our early morning badminton excursion in the second podcast.  Anyway, throw in a British medal contender and we're all (carefully concealed) ears.

Last night, we watched Britain's Anthony Joshua take on Erislandy Savon from Cuba in the super-heavyweight boxing.  This was the final bout in a session which had already seen some extremely poor officiating, as an Iranian heavyweight was unfairly disqualified in the first round for a few minor holding infringements.  That trend was about to continue.

Theirs was a riveting contest and Joshua fought well behind a penetrating jab.  But Savon landed more shots; cleaner shots.  To our untrained eyes the first round was at best a close call, but Savon edged the second and dominated the third, leaving Joshua holding on desperately at the end of the fight.  As the final bell sounded, Savon raised his hands and celebrated a hard-fought victory with his corner.  Or so he thought.  As you can see from this footage of the final round and decision, everyone, including Joshua, seemed rightly stunned when the referee raised the British fighter's hand to confirm that he had won by a single point.

Now we're as patriotic as the next owl, and we'll support every British athlete throughout these Games - even Andy Murray.  But while we desperately want to see them win, we don't want them to win like this.  Like most sports fans, we've despaired at previous decisions in other countries where supposedly impartial judges have been swayed to favour home fighters.  With a level playing field, this should still be the most successful Olympics in British boxing history.  Let's hope that ambition is realised through sheer skill and effort rather than administrative incompetence.

Zoe Smith: our hero

As discussed in episode 3, Zoe Smith is an incredible woman.

While building up to the most important competition of her life, Britain's best weightlifter somehow found time to articulately dismiss all the idiotic critics who expect her to conform to their wrong-headed and outdated stereotypes.  You can and definitely should read her brilliant blog here.

This is the part where we'd usually try to find something cynical or sarcastic to say, but we're absolutely blown away.  So just keep at it, Zoe.  We're behind you all the way.

That Bert le Clos interview

Since we featured him so prominently in episode three, we thought it only fair to post a link to Clare Balding's brilliant interview with Father Of The Year favourite Bert le Clos.

What does it feel like to watch your child beat Michael Phelps to win Olympic gold?  Bert knows.  Warning: may contain scenes of pure, unadulterated joy.

The Sporting Owl #3

In this landmark third episode of The Sporting Owl, Ria explains why handball is her new favourite sport and Tom tries to work out whether winning and losing are still different.  Dedicated to Bert le Clos.