I’m feeling a little stronger now. I was stunned into a strange state of despondency after England’s pathetic exit from the World Cup, so it took me a little while to perk up and notice that there were other sporting events taking place. I’d completely missed the entire first week of Wimbledon… no great loss you might say, and frankly with each year that passes I feel more like agreeing with you.

Wimbledon… the home of lawn tennis, the great annual jamboree of grass, gut, logo-riddled sportswear and strawberries ‘n’ cream. A fortnight of sweat, swearing, grunting, bad manners and testosterone-fuelled fist-pumping. And that’s just the women. And Andrew Murray’s mother.

Andrew Murray… now that Wayne ‘Mr Potato Head’ Rooney and his chav mates have embarrassed themselves into oblivion, the mantle of ‘Great British Sporting Hero’ has been wrapped once again round the shoulders of the slack-jawed, charmless Caledonian. As I write, he is playing (and presumably losing to) Rafa Nadal. I won’t be watching. If I have to watch opposing foreigners batter each other into submission for some tacky, meaningless trophy, I’d rather watch Holland v Brazil or Germany v Argentina.

Oh, and I really hope Nadal wins. I have spent too long listening to our Scottish neighbours proudly declaiming that they would support anybody as long as they were playing England. Well, that cuts both ways, Jimmy.

There might be some cricket happening somewhere, I’m sure the Australians are over here at some point this summer. Perhaps I can sit in the garden and listen to it on the wireless…

Not really anything to do with England failing to beat the USA, although it didn’t help. Not the quality of the football either, although some of the opening games have been predictably drab and cagey affairs. No, my beef is with the TV coverage, which is reaching the point where I can hardly bear to turn on the set. I have missed 3 matches already, which is unheard of.
Whoever is in charge of the live TV feed from South Africa is obsessed with using fancy replay technology, even while the ball is in play, so we have to wait patiently and guess what is happening on the pitch. I’ve lost count of the number of times we have been treated to footage of crowd and/or players looking anguished or joyful, managers throwing tantrums, ‘famous’ faces in the stands looking bored, injured players rolling around in agony, repeated replays from every possible angle of a goal or a foul we have seen umpteen times already, all shown in super slow motion that makes you wonder if the producers have seen ‘The Matrix’ once too often. In one match we even lost 15 seconds of live action while we were fed close-up images of the corner of the net bulging and billowing, as the game continued unremarked by cameras or commentators.
This obsession with getting the most from undoubtedly impressive video technology has been increasing for years. Up till now I could tolerate it, because the unnecessary bits were shorter, and with a little practice you could kind of judge there wasn’t a lot happening on the pitch by the noise level of the crowd. Which brings me to my second beef. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to encourage every spectator to have one of those damn plastic trumpets to blow? The soundtrack of every match has been a constant cacophony of monophonic honking, like a swarm of bees buzzing in my head, and it completely drowns the usual crowd noises, old-fashioned stuff like cheering, booing or whistling. No scope here for a much-loved aspect of our game, traditional football chants and songs. No choruses of “You’ll Never Walk Again” or “The Referee’s A Wanker”. All drowned out by the droning blare of what was obviously a marketing man’s dream, and has become a viewer’s (and commentator’s) nightmare.
I wonder how it affects the viewing figures. How many others decided they would give Algeria v Slovenia a miss so their ears could take a break, as I did. I wonder what the advertisers and sponsors will think.

Andy Murray is an unappealing, inexplicably successful Scottish tennis player.

The Alien is equally charmless and not widely known for his racquet skills.

I promised myself I’d ignore it, but I failed. The grotesque circus that is Formula 1 motor racing is on the move again. The 2008 season has kicked off in Australia, with Britain’s golden boy Lewis Hamilton winning the Melbourne Grand Prix. Now everyone’s off to Malaysia for Round 2, the juggernauts and executive jets spewing out even more CO2 on top of what’s generated by the actual racing.

I hate motor racing. I hate the waste, of time, money, energy, resources. I hate the way it glamourises speed. I hate the way it turns a practical activity, getting from A to B for a purpose, into a mindless sideshow involving driving round in a circle for hours on end. I hate the way the drivers are idolised as super-heroes, when they’re really just overpaid, obsessive, prima donna control freaks. I hate their chav baseball caps and overalls covered with decals and logos for their sponsors and whoever else can afford to buy space on them and their cars for whatever products it’s legal to advertise wherever we are this week. I hate the way they waste perfectly good champagne.

Some might say that racing drivers are highly skilled athletes, and I wouldn’t argue. I’m sure they’re tough as nuts, what with the heat and the G-forces, and being able to drive at such speeds with such small error margins is admirable in its way, I suppose. What I find so depressing is the sheer banal pointlessness of the whole thing. Take that fitness and stamina and do something useful with it; join the army or a conservation group. Use those skills for the good of all; drive an ambulance or a police pursuit vehicle. Or a bus.

You might argue that motor racing benefits us all because technical innovations developed for the F1 circuit eventually show up in production vehicles. I’d be more impressed by that point of view if Grand Prix were contested by family hatchbacks, powered by hybrid engines, using regenerative braking, backed up by roof-mounted solar panels. I’m aware there are species of motor sport where the vehicles look a bit like the car on next door’s drive, apart from the fins, spoilers, internal roll cages and what’s under the bonnet. They are, however, as different from your bank manager’s Nissan as Lewis Hamilton’s McClaren.

The idea of racing ordinary cars does have a certain vicarious appeal, as it obviously does for the Hamilton-worshipping oiks who stage suburban street races on Friday nights. Citroen 2CVs are still raced in France, although as this photo of the 2006 2CV 24 Hour race at Spa shows, they’ve been modified a little! The excitement generated by Top Gear’s regular slot Star In A Reasonably Priced Car shows there has to be mileage in this. Funnily enough, this season’s rule changes banning exotic gizmos like traction control and electronic driver aids made Melbourne one of the most entertaining races in years (so I’m told), with tonks galore and less than a third of entrants finishing.

Perhaps, if motor racing did reflect the real world, with identical Toyota Prius‘s chasing each other round a simulated urban circuit, I’d start watching. Better still, have half the entrants driving the other way. Even Lewis Hamilton might find that challenging.

Momentum is building to put pressure on China over its ‘involvement’ in Sudan. Stephen Spielberg has resigned as artistic director for the Beijing Olympic Games in protest at China’s support for the Sudan government. Now, an open letter, signed by Nobel Peace Prize winners, politicians, Olympic medalists and entertainers, criticises China’s President Hu Jintao for not taking action to prevent atrocities in Darfur.

“As the primary economic, military and political partner of the government of Sudan…China has both the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a just peace in Darfur.

“Ongoing failure to rise to this responsibility amounts, in our view, to support for a government that continues to carry out atrocities against its own people.”

Words are flying back and forth, but so far nobody has talked about a boycott of the Beijing Games. Just to get the ball rolling, I am declaring myself unavailable for selection for the Great Britain team for any of the sports which I play to an international standard. If that doesn’t get their attention, nothing will.

Meanwhile, the leader of the free world refuses to consider the idea of a boycott. George Bush has confirmed he will be accepting the Chinese invitation to attend the ‘Genocide Games’, saying that as far as he’s confirmed it’s “just a sporting event”. No, Mr President, international sport is all about politics, and this is the most politically-charged Games since Moscow 1980. To quote George Orwell:

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play, it is bound up with hatred and jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all the rules and sadistic pleasure in unnecessary violence. In other words it is war minus the shooting.”

Mr Bush should feel right at home. Apart from that bit about the shooting.

An article at bbc.co.uk speculates on the implications of David Beckham’s recent rehabilitation as an England soccer player. Let’s assume Beckham retains his place in the side for the remaining European qualifying matches and the 2008 Finals. Once he makes his move to California to play for LA Galaxy, his England commitments alone will require him to make 9 return air trips to London, totalling in the region of 100,000 miles. The emissions from this long-distance commuting come to around 17.5 tonnes of CO2.

You may say this is insignificant in the wider scheme of things. I say it’s unacceptable to generate 3.5 times the average annual CO2 emissions for 11 soccer games. This is a real ‘up yours’ to organisations like the One Tonners, who are beavering away to show that it’s possible to reduce personal emissions by 80% in the UK without impacting your standard of living.