I was throwing things at the TV over the Badminton until I realised that I really didn’t understand the rules.

Damn it, it’s happened again. It’s been four years since my last addiction and I was determined that it wasn’t going to happen this time. Four years ago I started off ambivalent but very quickly became obsessed and this year I had the same thought and it happened in exactly the same way, the sports started and I became hooked, watching everything from Athletics to Wrestling, taking in Badminton, Table Tennis, and all the tried and tested favourites.

I have no idea what happens to me, as my youngest daughter said, we both become experts in whatever we are watching. I was throwing things at the TV over the Badminton until I realised that I really didn’t understand the rules. We were both judging the lines that the cyclists were taking in the sprints and eulogising on strategies and tutting over the bits we didn’t agree with. I did the same with the Running (all distances), Heptathlon and I can tell you that Jess Ennis-Hill would have won gold if she’d listened to me, all she had to do was run 1 ½ seconds a lap faster in the 800m, is that so difficult? Yes, I do become unbearably opinionated.

Having said all that, I along with every UK citizen that pays tax, has an investment in the athletes that the UK produces and I couldn’t be prouder. I remember being proud of a single gold medalist and now I am celebrating lots of them. We seem to have the machine in place to produce Olympians, maybe not on the industrial scale of the Americans but we are getting there.

I have seen the armchair warriors slating various athletes and I am offended by that, these people represent the best of British, I hope they carry our sense of fair play and I hope that they try their best, so long as they leave their best on the track, field, pool or court, I couldn’t ask more of them. To watch them struggle but not quit, to take it to the limits of their endurance and to finish, what more would you want from your athletes? Yes, to win is the goal but not everyone can win and to see an athlete turn a defeat to a win in the space between the Olympics, is amazing.

Then we have the super humans and it looks like we might be saying goodbye to Jess Ennis-Hill but we are looking forward to KJT raising her game. We are saying Goodbye to Bradley Wiggins but this just allows Jason Kenny to fulfill his potential and also bring Callum Skinner to the fore, a new boy that is being groomed to take over from Kenny, not forgetting Laura Trott, the invincible smiling speed merchant and then Adam Peaty, a wonder kid in the pool. Doesn’t it just feel good to know the future is in good hands?

But then you have the other champions, the Olympics is a far wider family than Britain, I am sorry to see Michael Phelps go, he is special and not someone that you see many of in a lifetime (maybe Ed Moses for those of a certain age) and then you have the new kids on the block, Simone Biles (simply wow!), and Nafissatou Thiam.  We’re not the only ones with newly sprouting seeds and that is something incredible to behold, watching the older generation make way for the new, it’s not often we see such a big handover.

There are so many moments that I can pick in the various Olympics that I have watched, the great Ovett and Coe duals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txkz8VLO3iE),  Alan Wells winning the 100m in a very cold Russian stadium without the Americans there and visiting the US and beating them at home to show he was the true Olympic champion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTEIM3BWbSw)  or maybe something more recent, the incredible effort of Chris Hoy in his final race, being overtaken, not giving up and by sheer will power and guts, pulling it back to a win: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCsRgnPqANM).

My daughters were laughing when they found that Great Britain won a single gold medal in 1996 because they were born into a time of plenty, a time when we expect medals in sports, a time when the Government, rightly, invested in people’s ability. Sports isn’t a business that generates lots of obvious money but it does generate national pride. Every year we have the World Championships, we win some and lose some but our athletes gear themselves towards the Olympics and they make us extremely proud, we live the glory with them, they represent a vision of our nation that we want the world to see and that changes from year to year but this year it is a clean, drug free vision of athletes training to perfection and it is excellent to hear the great and the good condemning nations and athletes that demean the spirit of the games by cheating. Maybe it should be one strike and out for good. To hear the American team speaking out against one of their own is incredible and real testament to their feelings on cheating. It raises my hopes for a cleaner future because if the Americans put fair play before Gold, the world is truly changing and maybe the Russians can do the same.

We are heading into the final straight and the finish line is approaching faster than I hoped and I’m starting to wonder what I will do once this finishes. I know that I will feel lost and a little empty but my life rolls from one event to another, from the 6 Nations to the Isle of Man TT. With that in mind, I am feeling a little better, it will be a tough fortnight but I am sure that I can survive until the Paralympics.

Bring it on!!