I don’t know about you, but I have been captivated once more by the Olympics. Finding myself watching television at crazy hours of the day and night, learning a whole new vocabulary: gamjon, negative splits, backside 360 nose-clip.
There are so many stories and side-lines, crashing crescendos and soaring successes. None more touching than Britain’s Bianca suffering a last-gasp defeat in the taekwondo by a kick in the head in the final second. So near, and yet so far.
The rugby 7’s was a sight to behold especially if you caught the US team in full flight with a man down – you would have thought they were in the athletics.
The mountain biking was insane and showed that taking a path less travelled, which may be steeper, can deliver gold. The British boxers have consistently punched above their weight, the UK BMX team have dazzled, and the golf was thrilling, with a clutter bug of 7 properly fighting, tooth and nail, for bronze! I pulled a Saturday all-nighter to watch the stunning equestrian cross country where the Tokyo backdrop took your breath away. And where all 3 of the British equestrian team were amongst just 6 of 63 to execute faultless rounds. They were sheer class and culminated that on Monday with Team Gold. Equestrian, mixed triathlon and relay swimming are just three examples where men and women were competing on equal terms and here Team GB simply rock.
A few of the lessons learnt this week:
- If you are a man (or woman) down – run faster
- UK does “mixed” the very best; swimming, triathlon, equestrian
- Our teams are beautifully diverse lets simply celebrate that
- The Irish can be charming, disarming and lethally competitive all at once.
- Don’t expect a different result from doing something the same every time.
- Pull in the right direction to win; erratic steering equals wasted effort
And how do I Segway from here to IT, ERP, and projects I hear you ask? Well maybe I won’t, simply because our performance in Tokyo deserves a chapter all to itself, but I can’t resist a few analogies.