Reaching Out

In my last post I managed to narrow down all the prospective sports into a short(long)list of: Wrestling, Triathlon, Sailing, Modern Pentathlon, Handball, Judo, Equestrian; dressage; eventing; jumping, Cycling; mountainbike; road; track, Athletics, Archery, Aquatics; water polo; synchronised swimming.

Although I had managed to successfully scythe this list down from the complete list of Olympic sports I still needed some information and inspiration to help me understand more about the sports and focus my efforts on those to which I am best suited. So I turned to my blog comments to see what my adoring followers had suggested and found…0 comments. That got me interested, I wonder how many people are following my progress, I few clicks later and I found a stats page that told my I was receiving ~1 visit per day. I thought that wasn’t bad until I realised that actually it was logging all the times I visited my blog before logging in and that in all probability the only visit and comment I had received was from an automated site admin (which I now thoroughly regretted deleting).

Now, as I laid out in my first post this blog is as much about helping me keeping a track of my progress as it is about building up my eventual fan base. However the prospect of an endless monologue with cyberspace did make me think about the relative merits of a blog as opposed to just buying a paper diary and I decided now I had wasted 30 minutes of my life setting this thing up I might as well embrace the 21st Century and try to tap into the undoubtedly vast army of people and automated site admin who would love to follow a potential Olympic Athlete’s plight and become metaphorically ‘tapped into’.

How to go about this, well a quick search on the wordpress forum told me,

You really do need to drop your expectations, unless you’ve gotten national tv coverage or a direct link from Fark or something. There are about 100,000,000 blogs in the world. How are people supposed to find yours?

fair enough so how do I go about helping people to find my blog,

Read and comment on other blogs…find the people who care about the same stuff you do. Then subscribe to their blog using a RSS reader …When you see an article that interests you click through to their site and leave a comment with your thoughts.

So, with that in mind, here is what I found.

First blog I found was what appears to be the official London Olympics blog which includes At least 3 things you didn’t know about Synchronised Swimming and I can certainly say that I did not know that, “only women can compete at the Olympics”, so I think I can safely cross that one of the list (I should point out that crossing any of these sports of of ‘the list’ has very little chance of actually endangering anybody).

Amongst others I found the regularly updated BBC Olympics blog with some interesting posts and this blog where a couple of enthusiastic chaps chart their progress towards a place in the USA Kayak team team. Is their strategy of targeting one event (which it appears they are already rather good at) for the past two years more likely to achieve results or  is it (as I expect) a case of putting all your Olympic eggs in one basket?

So, if you’re reading this having followed my link from the aforementioned blogs (or having followed a link from anywhere for that matter) and no-ones posted a comment yet, go on, say hi, and a couple of years from now when your watching me step up onto the podium you can say “I was there, I was there when it all began!”

compiling the longlist

Since my last post I have managed to find a list of Olympic sports here. Which lists each of the sports with a handy picture alongside to give me an idea what I’m letting myself in for. Who would have though there were so many sports, and these are only the categories! So, we need to narrow it down a bit, which of these sports have the ideal balance of unpopularity (lack of competition) and being easy (I’m a little conscious that I don’t have much time left).

Aquatics, Diving – No. On the face of it seems like the ideal sport, can’t be that hard to master, surely not that much competition, no expensive equipment needed and I actually have a history at this sport. When I was little my sisters spent ages on a summer holiday trying to do a back dive, then I had a go and did it perfectly first time. This success was short lived however as the next year I had a go, over shot it and hit my head against the wall of the pool and haven’t tried since. Not sure I can face having another ‘crack’ at it.

Aquatics, Swimming – No. Regularly get beaten by sister and my friend if ever I try and race them down the pool. I should also mention that the friend is a girl, this may seem sexist but seeing as all the world records are held by men then if I hope to compete at the top level I really need to be able to beat women.

Aquatics, Synchronised swimming – Maybe. This is exactly the sort of obscure sport where it seems possible that I might be able to make up for not having any real athletic ability.

Aquatics, Water Polo – Maybe. Don’t really know much about this one but might give it a try as long as my below average swimming ability doesn’t let me down.

Archery – Maybe. I can’t imagine there’s much athletic ability required for this one, just lots of practice and who knows my beer belly my actually make me more stable, it’s just big darts after all.

Athletics – Maybe. I’m not all to fit, but this has lots of sub-categories so there must be something obscure to find in there.

Badminton – No. Friend (same girl as before) always beats me, says I don’t have enough ‘flick’ in my wrist.

Basketball – No. Far to popular, Americans play this at school, I don’t stand a chance.

Boxing – No. The idea of getting hit, especially in the face does not appeal to me.

Canoe, Slalom – No. Last time I competed in a canoe it was a tandem marathon. After a promising start we found a hole in our boat, and sank…repeatedly.

Canoe, Sprint – No. See above.

Cycling, BMX – No. Looks like the sort of activity you could get hurt doing, and not the sort of hurt you get when someone tackles you to the ground and you go urrgghh but the kind of hurt when you you hit your chin against something metal and you want to cry. I want to, if at all possible avoid this sort of hurt.

Cycling, Mountain Bike – Maybe. Got bike, like cycling.

Cycling, Road – Maybe. As above.

Cycling, Track – Maybe. As above.

Equestrian, Dressage – Maybe. I’ve been told I look quite good in a tux so maybe that’ll work in my favour. Just need to get hold of a horse.

Equestrian, Eventing – Maybe. Anyone got a spare horse?

Equestrian – Jumping. Just to borrow you understand.

Fencing – No. Looks like it requires a bit to much hand eye co-ordination for my liking.

Football – No. Played this one enough to know I’m no real good at it.

Gymnastics, Artistic – No. The Pictures on the site for these three all suggest I’ll be required to contort my body into positions that I’m pretty sure my body couldn’t physically manage.

Gymnastics, Rhythmic – No. As above. How come some sports get 3/4 categories for essentially doing the same thing in 3/4 slightly different ways.

Gymnastic, Trampoline – No. No offence to gymnasts but if they can get a separate category for trampolining then surely athletes at least deserve track AND field.

Handball – Maybe. On the basis that I can’t rule it out until I find out what it is. Picture just shows a man whose hand IS a ball, surely not?!?

Hockey – No. Played it a few times at school and along with not being particularly good I remember getting hit on the hand with a stick and it really hurting.

Judo – Maybe. My kind of martial art, a quick google reveals it seems to be all about self defence so I’m not quite sure how they end up fighting. Also having never tried this sport I am yet to prove myself not to be of Olympic standard, big plus.

Modern Pentathalon – Maybe. Can’t be much competition for this one, still have the horse deficit to deal with though.

Rowing – No. Tried this at uni not only was training hell but in the only event we entered we were so poor that we dropped more places in the league than if we hadn’t turned up!

Sailing – Maybe. I’ve got a friend with a boat, maybe I’ll give him a call.

Shooting – No. Not sure I’d get on with the shooting crowd.

Table Tennis – No. Although on the face of it a bit of a mickey mouse sport a quick youtube search reveals that the top players have almost superhuman powers.

Taekwondo – No. Picture shows man being kicked in the face by another man, definite no.

Tennis – No. Again regularly beaten by friend (yup same one, maybe I should recommend she should have a crack at the Olympics).

Triathalon – Maybe. Although one might think that my lack of talent at running and swimming might let me down the picture of someone happily pushing their bicycle with much gaiety appeals to me.

Volleyball – No. Tried once, hands hurt

Volleyball, Beach – No. Really, this can’t come under the category Volleyball. Shotput, oh, we’ll stick that in with long distance running, they’re pretty much the same, but how could you possibly even compare volleyball and beach volleyball.

Weightlifting – No. I think I’ll save hideously deforming my spine for 2016 if I don’t get in to 2012.

Wrestling – Maybe. Looks like a bit of a laugh, have to check that they’re not allowed to punch you in the face.

Well, I’ve got quite a lot to be getting on with here, any advice on getting started in any of these sports much appreciated.

beginnings’

It’s Wednesday 12th May, I’ve just turned 25 and I’m still not a famous athlete.

By the time the London Olympics comes around I will be 27 and although medals have been won at much greater ages I feel that if I do not at least have a crack at this one then I will never be an Olympian.

I have set up this blog to chart my progress to fame, stardom, glory and making my mum and dad proud by competing in the Olympics.

My first issue I have is sport, although an ‘outdoorsy’ type I’m yet to really excel in any one sport (by which I do not in any way mean that I have excelled at many) so my first step will be to identify a sport, and with that I shall leave this blog and google “list of Olympic sports”.

May the path to 2012 commence…