Nobody has thought of offering an alternative Games site out in the old paddock by the schoolground where I won the obstacle race 50 summers ago.
Sport, like everything else, has become so sophisticated: where is the egg-and-spoon race where one cracked more than a smile? The bags of fun in the sack race; the race for mothers, that squealing skittering onrush of homemakers which children regarded with a mixture of awe and disquiet that underneath the “have you washed-your-hands” disciplinarian there still lurked the last madcap remnants of girlhood?
There was also the flag race when pony riders thrust flags on long staves into barrels.
They rode snorting, wild-eyed ponies with outrageous fringes and someone’s saddle usually fell off. Perhaps the one belonging to the blonde girl and it fell off strategically so that she was cushioned by the ready arms of half a dozen young farmers who had been hovering, waiting for this kind of signal. Was it pre- arranged, we innocent children wondered?
Was it part of the mysterious world of display and courting?
And threading the needle? Heavens woman, do you know what a needle is? I was only saying to the tame moth that dwells among my socks and makes a nice living eating heels: I said to him, “needles bring only shrieks and vapours from the avant garde wife these days.”
Take it away, don’t let me see it, those days are over (they shriek).
The obstacle race was the crowning glory for, if you were clumsy, you could combine your weighty and unresponsive limbs with the obstacles.
Somehow I fell through pig nets in the manner born; I crawled under tarpaulins like a great centipede under a floor-board; and I went over the top. of the rope ladder obstacle while the frame from which it was suspended bowed like an archer’s at Agincourt and even the judges at the finishing line averted their eyes.
There was also the eating the apple in the tub and I went after that bobbing orb like a porpoise after a pilchard, my nostrils flaring and blowing great gouts of water over my competitors.
The terrible snapping of my Jaws on my ruddy-skinned prey was like the shutting of a bear trap.
I suppose the mixed three-legged race drew my attention to the marvellous excitement of the proximity of a girl. I raced with a girl called Kath who was forward where I was shy, who had steel muscles in her legs that worked like pistons.
Certainly I demanded hours of practice from her and we ran three-legged down the country roads, our arms around each other, conscious of the wind in the roadside pepper trees and the beautiful unison of dirty knees.
Sure. I skinned her ankles but she struck me affectionately with her schoolbag weighted with a couple of stones, and who was I to complain.
I shall never forget the race, the gut feeling I had when the starter dropped his handkerchief.
We were away in a beautiful concert of white socks and sandshoes, our rivals panting beside us. I knew how Ben Hur must have felt. How our footfalls thundered.
All this is but an exaggerated aside, to say the world gets too serious about its Games.
I cannot find any three-legged race listed for the Olympics. Nor apple-in-the-tub.
Just the same mad confrontations, the clamouring national anthems, the electronic timers.
Where is she now, my fair partner of the three-legged race? Probably slaving over a table of toffee at the school gala day.
I understand there’s still a lot of it around.
Max Fatchen