The Games...

The Olympic Games in Rio have been in the news for the last couple of years, mostly for the wrong reasons, and now the games themselves finally begin. Radio 5 - my radio station of choice - will be the ‘Olympic station’ for the next three weeks, and talk will be of “medalling”, “world records” and “personal bests”. The event has grown way too big; in 2016 it seems like a celebration of global capitalism. Somebody will run faster than everybody else. Somebody will win a medal and then fail a routine test for performance enhancing drugs. Someone will emerge from the sporting shadows to become a household name, “winning the hearts and minds of the nation”. Someone will wrap themselves - literally - in the union jack…