My earliest memory is when I was around four years old. I recall staring at a very small black and white television and watching a lady winning a gold medal swimming the two hundred metres breaststroke at the Olympics in Rome.
My parents were very excited at the time, and we all jumped up and down.
I have been in awe of Olympians and the Olympics ever since and have always watched them create such wonderful memories:
The look of astonishment on the face of long jumper Lynn Davies (having been an Olympic champion in sixty four) being blitzed by Bob Beamon who literally jumped out of the pit in sixty-eight! The iconic commentary of David Coleman as David Hemery won the four hundred hurdles, the agony of the “Shutlanger Flyer” Derek Redmond, The Coe and Ovett years, more recently the velodrome highs and dramas with Victoria Pendleton, Laura Kenny, Chis Hoy and Jason Kenny.
Wonderful memories of triumph and personal bests, tinged at times with sadness and pain.
It’s easy to celebrate the glamour of medals, but to see any athlete achieve a personal best is always the ultimate outcome in my eyes. To watch this week for instance Team GB Cyclocross rider Evie Richards come fifth having had concussion just a few weeks before was just surreal…
I could literally sit down and share with you so many wonderful experiences, the Olympics have always filled my heart with joy and excitement in equal measure. The winners, the losers, the agony and the ecstasy that only the greatest show on earth can bring.
I have met some of these Olympians in my lifetime. The first was on a Sunday afternoon at Hednesford Hills Raceway in Cannock. I was in my twenties and the leading light of British cycling in those days was Wolverhampton born Hugh Porter. He had a bet with the Raceway promoter he could beat a car on his bicycle over one lap. Good for drumming up an audience, and a bit of fun, the crowd cheered Hugh on, never more so the lady sitting next to me who was….
The very lady I watched as a four-year-old win an Olympic gold.
How life moves in mysterious ways!
(By the way she was very nice speaking to a star stuck twenty something Peter Roper.)
Hugh of course became a legend behind the microphone for many cycle races on the BBC.
However, I am writing this today on Monday after last night’s Olympic event which was very special.
Special because Adam Peaty was trying for an unprecedented third gold medal in the one hundred metres breaststroke. If you didn’t see it he failed in his bid by the smallest of margins, claiming silver.
As he was interviewed with tears in his eyes, he said something that has really struck a chord with me.
He said he had mixed feelings (check out his back story and you will realise he has had some very real challenges.)
But then he said something…
He said I am HAPPY!
That his tears were HAPPY TEARS and that he was in a good place.
I can remember as a child my mother particularly used to say “BE Happy”
With the insistence on BE!
With a world that is currently in turmoil (isn’t it ever) it is just too easy to let everything get you down, something I confess I have allowed it to in recent times.
However as of today I chose to BE Happy as much as I can. To make business decisions that make me Happy and cutting out outside influences wherever possible.
Don’t get me wrong here, and for avoidance of doubt, I realise the world and its people will continue to throw curve balls at us and there will be times of sadness, but I chose to BE Happy with what I do and what I achieve.
Just like Adam Peaty.
Who knows, maybe I will sit by Adam one day and I can thank him, just like I did Anita Lonsbrough all those years ago for giving me a lifelong love of the Olympics.
And to Adam an even greater message of thanks.
Until the next time…
Peter
