Just when you thought it was safe to have an early night along comes the women's 20km walk at four in the morning, a big gang of them waddling around Sydney for 90 minutes with only those not actually caught jogging making it in to Stadium Australia for the finish. Fantastic.
You can scoff, but while you were snoring and wheezing and tossing and turning you missed a tragicomedy of truly mammoth dunno-whether-to-chuckle-or-blubber proportions, with the central calamitous character one Jane Saville of Australia. Just 100 metres from home-town golden glory and Jane was . . . disqualified. "I came into the tunnel and slowed down. I saw the chief judge and he started touching his paddle and I thought `no, no'," she explained later. Indeed.
By then the Irish walker Gillian O'Sullivan was in 10th place but so many of the people in front of her were being redcarded it was beginning to look awful like Ireland was about to strike gold, with Gillian the sole remaining competitor after 20 gruelling kilometres. And me the sole telly viewer in Ireland cheering her on. Shame on ye.
Gripping stuff. After 16km Italy's Elisabetta Perrone was sent off but refused to leave the course and waddled on, a bit like Charlie Redmond in that Dublin match a few years' back. Earlier a Chinese walker was yellow-carded for running and promptly disappeared into the middle of the pack so she could "jog in peace", as George Hamilton put it.
By 18km one found oneself caring very much about the outcome of the race which, you have to admit, is fairly sad. Not, by my reckoning though, as sad as the man I spoke to who confessed to getting emotional about the fencing on Eurosport the other morning. Aren't the Limpics gas all the same?
Anyway, back to the walking/jogging. When Perrone was chucked out that left Australian (nudge, nudge) Jane out front on her own. I thought back to the opening ceremony when a man by the name of Peter Kerr left out "with complete impartiality" from the judge's oath he read to the assembled masses. If only Gillian's name was Sheila, one thought, they'd guarantee her a silver. George was as cynical as me.
"They wouldn't disqualify Saville, would they," he asked Tony O'Donoghue in a huh, huh, huh kind of way. "Well, he would be a brave man, let me put it that way," Tony huh, huh, huh-ed in reply. But then Italian judge Lamberto Vacchi touched his paddle. "When she gets into the stadium all she has to do is walk down the 100 metres strait and OH MY GAAAWWWWD, she's been disqualified," howled an apoplectic Tony when Lamberto crept out from the shadows and ambushed Jane in the stadium tunnel, waving a red card in her face. "Lord bless us, she must have lost concentration," Tony almost wept.
Jane didn't almost weep, she bawled, almost as much as me. Asked later what she needed to get herself right again she replied: "A gun to shoot myself." So, at least she's being positive about the experience and, with a bit of luck, she won't abandon walking to resume her previous sporting career, surf lifesaving. So, China's Wang Liping overtook a semi-hysterical Jane to shuffle into the stadium where the crowd greeted her with much the same rapture as Martin McGuinness might received at a DUP annual conference.
"Do you really think she is in constant contact with the ground in that picture," asked Tony as Wang, well, sprinted towards the finish line. Mmm, no. For fear of offending walkophiles we'll whisper it: is this sport not a bit of an auld farce? And speaking of sources of sad-all-the-same-amusement. Did you see Latvian Raimonds Bergmanis in the 105 kilo weightlifting competition? "Oh dear," was all the Eurosport commentator could muster when Raimonds, making his first attempt at picking up that bar thing, fell on his elbow, whereupon the bar hit him on the head and then smashed his foot. He suffered a dislocated elbow, a bruised head and an even more bruised ego and had to be carried from the stage by three men.
Bless him. Raimonds and Jane, my absolute most favourite stars of the Games so far. And most favourite competitor's name? No contest. Australian synchronised diver Loudy Tourky, which is pretty much how you'd describe Dustin when he's being rowdy on The Den. It's just one big whacky crazy shindig, this Limpics, eh?
