Underdogs

I haven't really cared much about the Olympics since I was ten (when I had a birthday cake in the form of Mishka the Bear), but something I'm enjoying hugely about the London Limpix are the competitors whose sheer pluck has made the crowds go wild, even when - especially when - they've come in last. Sarah Attar, the first woman to represent Saudi Arabia at the Olympics, got a standing ovation; Merve Aydin, painfully injured, fought to complete her lap and won the crowd's adulation. This may be something which happens at every Games; but to me, there's something quintessentially British about cheering on the underdog.

And in today's Herald, I read:

"Ever since Eric the Eel splashed around the pool in Sydney, there has been a quest at every Olympics to find his successor. Not a Games can go by without a cult figure being adopted by the fans and media. The usual criteria includes being hopeless at your sport, trying very hard and smiling all the way. Hamadou Djibo Issaka of Niger didn't take long to put up his hand. Nicknamed 'Hamadou the Hippo', he finished dead last in all of the races he contested in the men's single scull. And he did it all with pride and perseverance, stroking his way up the lake at Eton Dorney as the galleries roared him to the line."

I couldn't recall Eric the Eel, so I went a-Googling, and discovered a video of his valiant 100m heat. If applauding the plucky underdog is typically British, then Roy and HG's commentary, equal parts affection, admiration, and taking the piss - out of both the competitor, and the Olympics in general - is characteristically Australian*. (So Australian, in fact, it hasn't translated at all well for some YouTube commenters! Believe me, both the crowd and the commentators are firmly on Eric's side.)

* I'm going nuts trying to think of the word that encapsulates this sympathetic mockery. It's sort of the opposite of schadenfreude. (ETA: I wonder if it has something to do with non-serious insults between siblings and friends - so insulting a stranger, in this particular context, becomes an expression of affection!)

Bah

Another day, another 250 words.

The fleas do a tap dance

"Those million-dollar ideas are over my head. Listen, professor, how does a Geiger counter count, anyway? Does it say one, two, three, four?"

"Sure, sure," Tom replied, chuckling. "How did you ever pass your physics course?"

"Okay, the Geiger counter works on impulses," Bud said. "As I see it, inside the gas-filled tube is a colony of trained fleas. The near presence of uranium raises the temperature of the gas, giving the fleas the hotfoot."

"Right," Tom answered in mock seriousness. "Then the fleas do a tap dance which makes the clicking on the Geiger counter."

Bud burst into a laugh. "It serves me right," he said.

- "Victor Appleton", Tom Swift and His Flying Lab, 1954. I'm not sure when and where I read this, but the tap-dancing fleas have been stuck in my head ever since.