Tokyo Olympics 2020 (deferred to 2021)

I think its been widely accepted that the 2012 Paralympics was the most successful ever and doubt it will ever be repeated.
Part of it was down to the fact that the main Olympics sold out so people bought Paralympics tickets to be able to experience the Olympics. The venues were packed every day which has never happened before and many of the Olympians became household names. We really embraced it and created a great atmosphere. As well as working on the Olympics for several years I also went to several events at both Olympics and Paralympics and can honestly day that I actually preferred the whole Paralympic experience which had the most amazing atmosphere.

If I recall correctly the Olympic Broadcasting Services didn't bother covering some of the Paralympic events in Rio and it was left to Channel 4 / Sunset+Vine to provide the only available TV coverage of some aspects of the Games. I have vague memories of them supplying footage to other countries as well, but I can't find any references to that now so I may be misremembering.

In fairness the stadia in Rio were empty for the Olympics, a big disaster there unfortunately.

The Olympic committee are like FIFA for the World Cup, they go where the money is. Public opinion really shifted in Japan and the population were sadly quite anti-Olympics in the end. It is going to Paris in 3 years time, the French can be quite volatile and whimsical, it doesn’t take them much to protest and riot (Do you hear the people sing.) Then it is Los Angeles in 2028 where the Americans love anything like that, unless public money is spent on it.

I think it’s a bit more than that - the Paralympics started here, and we’ve always had more interest in it than some other countries. There’s a cultural delight in stories of people overcoming adversity which makes the paralympics resonate, I think.

It’s a bit like how everyone mentioned that the crowds at the 2012 Olympics would always cheer as loud or louder for an injured competitor who limped in last over the line as the winner. That is apparently just not something that happens at Olympics in other countries, and really surprised a lot of the commentators from overseas.

Your generalisations are astounding. Three athletes out of hundreds competing is not all.

You are essentially defaming all the athletes who compete clean, so perhaps think again.

OK, so that's Tokyo 2020 over. At least it's not long until the Winter Games. (And damn, we did well in the Paralympics. As they pointed out on The Last Leg, Britain excels at being disabled.)

But given how entertaining some of these sports are it baffles me that we don't see more of them on TV more of the time. Football, cricket and golf ... it's like someone made a list of all the sports, sorted them by boringness, took the ones that topped the tedium list and said "These are the things we should put thousands of hours of TV into".