Bland Games come to an end

I'm one of those people who loves the Olympics.
For a couple of weeks you become deeply interested in sports you pay absolutely no attention to for four years. I love watching the cycling, both road and track, the diving, the rowing, swimming, selected track and field events and beach volleyball.
I was also engrossed in the Australia vs Japan softball match that went into five extra innings.
Perhaps it is a patriotic thing, though I don't go around draped in the Aussie flag, but the Olympics is almost compulsory viewing.
This is something that our broadcaster, channel 7, is probably counting on. Their telecast was woeful at very best. Too many delayed events portrayed as live, too many cutting between the event and the studio as if to justify the host's job.
I got really sick of the Stephanie Rice/Eamon Sullivan `are they really broken up' thing. Didn't particularly care before the Games and don't care now.
As for his comment about his private life not being private anymore, that's the price you pay when you excel at anything in the year 2008 (particularly in sport if you are an Aussie) - and if he was so concerned about his private life he shouldn't have stripped to his underwear for that advertising campaign.
The one thing I regret about the Games happened last night.
I started watching the men's 10m platform final and when Matthew Mitcham went so-so in his first dive I decided to go to bed. I get up this morning and he's won the gold and broke the Olympic record for a dive score.
Damn. I found the coverage of his win in the news very interesting given his life circumstances. Regardless it was an amazing effort and I'm sorry I missed it.
So the blandest Games of my memory, and certainly the most staged, is over and the Olympic movement can go back to normal in 2012. There won't be lip-synching nine year olds, fake fireworks and tanks patrolling the streets.
It didn't help that channel 7 contributed to the feeling that it was very stale and controlled.
China did better than I think most people thought they would but they still managed to suck the spirit out of a celebration of freedom and sport, at least from an outsider's point of view.