A bluffer's guide to race walk

Okay, we’ve been doing this for how long now?

Two weeks, give or take.

And we’ve covered how many of your idiotic “sports”?

About a dozen, I guess.

And I have said how many of them aren’t actually real sports?

Just about all of them.

Okay, well I mean it this time.

I had a feeling you would.

Seriously, of all the dumb sports in the Olympics, race-walking has to have the least going for it. I’m with Bob Costas, the guy from NBC in the States. It’s like having a competition to see who can whisper the loudest.

I get it. So what you’re saying is, why don’t they just run?

Exactly!

You don’t watch the Tour De France and go, ‘Those guys should have motorbikes.’ You don’t watch soccer and ask, ‘Why don’t they just catch the ball?’

Yeah, but this is different.

Why so?

Because they look ridiculous doing it!

Okay, it’s hard to defend a sport that makes to appear as though you badly need the toilet for 50 kilometres. But they have to walk that way.

Says who?

Says the rules. Race-walkers have to keep in contact with the ground at all times and keep their front leg straight as their bodies pass over it. The reason for all the hip swinging is race-walkers always want to drive their pelvis forward to keep momentum going in the right direction. Rotating the hips reduces sideways motion.

Yeah, whatever. It makes them look like penguins late for a very important krill meeting.

Good one. You do know that we have some decent competitors in Ireland?

Failed hurlers, no doubt.

World-class athletes actually. Put Rob Heffernan or Olive Loughnane in a 5k against any intercounty player and they’d walk it faster than the hurlers would run it.

Seriously?

No doubt about it.

Have they a chance so?

Both are definite top-10 shots. Heffernan’s field has thinned out a bit due to recent doping revelations and Loughnane was a world silver medallist in 2009. A bit of luck, a few DQs ahead of them and you never know.

And waddle they do afterwards?

I see what you did there.

Bet they listen to hip-hop when they’re training.

Stop it.

QUICK NOTES

Top spoofing factoid: In its earliest incarnation back in the 19th century, the sport was called Pedestrianism.

Do say: The Russian walker got a red card for loss of contact.

Don't say: They must have all lost their contacts. Have you seen you stupid they look?

When: Men's 50k at 9am; Women's 20k at 5pm.

Gold possible but it's a long shot

Although Montenegrins have won Olympic medals many times in the past, they've always done so under banners that weren't wholly their own. But tonight in the basketball arena, the Montenegro women's handball team will take on Norway in the ultimate David v Goliath gold medal match.

Despite barely being ranked in the top 10 coming to London, Montenegro have beaten France and Spain to get to the final – both considered medal contenders and both of whom lost out to Montenegro by a single goal in the knock-out stages.

"It's an amazing success," Montenegro coach Dragan Adzic said after their 27-26 win over Spain on Thursday night. "We are a country of 600,000 people and this is our first Olympic medal in history. It's amazing, it's historic, it's something we will never forget. There are only 100 women in Montenegro who play handball."

Adzic was joking with such a low figure but then, against such a world handball power as Norway, there almost may as well be only 100 players in Montenegro. They go in as underdogs against some of the best players in the world tonight but it has to be said Norway have stuttered at times in this tournament and lost to both France and Spain in the group stages here.

It's a long shot but the possibility of Montenegro's first ever medal being a gold can't be discounted.