One of the lines carpeting the stage for the closing ceremonies last night, and requiring a degree in English literature to decipher, was Samuel Johnson’s, “When a man tires of London he tires of life.”
I grew a little weary watching, though, and wondered why John Lennon’s Imagine (“Imagine there’s no countries…”) was sung at the end of an Olympics where virtually all of the winners, in a now almost obligatory act, draped themselves in their national flags. Much more appropriate would have been Ralph McTell’s Streets of London, dedicated to all the athletes who failed to win a medal.
Though the long ceremony allowed me to reflect on some of the fortnight’s highlights. I thought of Ashton Eaton (did you just say “Who?”) and of how the decathlon is the Olympic equivalent of travel writing in that you have to excel at a number of disciplines. And of how decathletes get overshadowed, just like travel writers, by the flashy specialists. (The last page of the Miami Herald's sports section today features pictures of nine American gold medalists, including a tennis player and two beach volleyball players, but not the world’s greatest athlete.)
One of my lasting memories of the games will be seeing Matt Lauer sitting with his colleagues atop a sightseeing bus and looking abashed, as if he were Wilfred Thesiger joining a tour group.
And I was disappointed that Jim Cantore, visiting London’s oldest pub, gave us the name of the barmaid who poured him a beer (Hanna), but never told us where she was from. I have a good idea – having met my own Hanna across the bar of a London pub – and suspect that a Polish immigrant didn’t fit NBC’s idea of merry old England. But aren’t the Olympics about international understanding? Imagine there’s no editors.
