Bring Back Eddie the Eagle, All Is Forgiven!

Remember Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards? How could we ever forget! Oh, how we laughed at his ridiculous, Mr Magoo antics. Oh, how we chuckled when he finished plum last in both the 70 metres and 90 metres Olympic ski jump competitions at the Calgary Games in 1988. Oh, how the snooty Alpine nations turned their noses up at this ridiculous, speccy four-eyed Brit! Well, fast forward 22 years and another Winter Olympics staged in Canada. The Vancouver Games have just finished and out of the British winter team of 52 athletes only one will come home with a medal. Of course, as Amy Williams will point out, it's a gold medal and for that we are all thankful, but one medal, and only one other top five placing (skater Jon Eley) is truly pitiful. Yes, I know, it was better than in Turin four years ago when we only had Shelley Rudman's silver medal to crow about, but not by much, and certainly not enough to justify the millions seemingly being wasted on sports we're clearly not very good at. Why don't we bite the bullet and focus on sports we are good at, especially for the 2012 Olympics in London? The success and failure of these Games will depend to a great degree on home success, just as it did in Beijing and indeed Vancouver. In the light of the past fortnight Eddie The Eagle doesn't seem such a big joke, after all!