I can’t be doing with the Olympics. You don’t know who is competing honestly and who is… well, getting a bit of outside assistance from the pharmaceutical industry. For some countries, the latter course of action would appear to be more or less mandatory if recent news reports are anything to go by.
However, I did notice this story today. It concerns the men’s 10m synchronised diving competition, in which GB won a bronze medal. As the name suggests, the participants in this sport are not singular in relation to each country – they’re plural. You see, it wouldn’t be called “synchronised” if there was only one of them. The upshot is that two divers dive off a platform, do stuff while they’re falling – this is where the synchronised part comes in, you understand – and then hit the water together. The more synchronised they are, the better their score. And whatever the result, barring a complete cock-up by one of them, they are both equally responsible.
All of the foregoing is only true if you’re not a newspaper editor, though. You see, the GB pair who won the bronze medal consists of Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfellow. But in most of this morning’s newspapers – and as you’d expect, the Daily Mail was at the front of the queue – only photographs of Tom Daley were shown. Daniel Goodfellow’s mother is understandably upset over this, and well she might be.
In the BBC story I’ve linked to above, they quote “an expert” from the media – Bob Satchwell, from the Society of Editors – who makes the one comment (in bold) which appears so suddenly that it is guaranteed to mean exactly the opposite of what it says:
Often an editor will make a decision according to the space available, and in this case most likely needed something ‘tall and thin’.
I don’t think there’s anything more sinister than that.
Yes, Mr Satchwell. I’m absolutely certain that Tom Daley’s well-publicised lifestyle choice (which has hardly been out of the bloody newspapers since the last Olympics) didn’t enter into it, and it needed you to make that clear for everyone right out of the blue like that. The truth is that if it hadn’t been for all that coverage about Tom Daley’s sexuality over the last four years he wouldn’t have been singled out like this – his diving partner is just as photogenic. Tom Daley is what he is as far as media targets go because of the coverage of his private life – and because the world is currently trying its damnedest to show how tolerant it is. And that is somewhat more sinister than you suggest.
The saddest part is that the media and those loopy Olympics hangers-on are wetting themselves over what is only a bronze medal, after all (I know, I know – but let’s just be honest). The two people who should really should be proud and excited by it (because they won it) are Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfellow. Thanks to the Daily Mail and the rest ballsing it up because of their warped agenda, the event of a lifetime has been ruined for one of them.