It’s not quite the same hollow feeling I had at the end of the London 2012 Olympics, but, four days on, I still miss the Sochi winter games.
A self-deprecating moment in Sochi 2014’s closing ceremony
The youth of the world have been exhorted to assemble four years from now in PyeongChang, British medal winners have received the customary Downing Street reception and a weird Eggheads spin-off is on BBC Two after work.
Generally I prefer summer sports to winter ones, and even in the final days before the opening ceremony I was finding it hard to get hugely excited about Sochi 2014. The parallel attraction of the Six Nations probably had something to do with that, as well.
But, cheesily, the whole Olympic ethos, of down-to-earth athletes coping admirably with both the pressure and the media which had ignored them for the previous 47 months, quickly won me over.
There are some sports I like – bobsleigh, curling and ice hockey – but I temporarily put aside my old-fashioned instincts to embrace even the snowboard halfpipe (rule of thumb: lots of big spinning are good).
Team GB also did plenty to keep interest high. They exceeded their pre-Games target of three medals and ended up with their best medal count since the very first Winter Olympics in 1924, but, even so, a British public spoiled by the third-placed Summer Olympic finish in 2012 was almost disappointed with that. Particularly so considering, as Great Britain’s chef de mission Mike Hay pointed out, more medals were almost within grasp before slipping, agonisingly, away:
“Some of us are disappointed that we may have left a couple of medals out there in Sochi. Our short-track speedskaters did fantastically well and were extremely unlucky not to come back with a medal.
“I’m very proud of the team. I’m not sure about the relevance of comparing with 1924, but we are delighted to have exceeded our target and come back a successful delegation.
“In performance sport you are measured by the medal table and how well you did, and I’m delighted to say our athletes did Great Britain proud.”
I don’t want to delve into the politics of Russia, but it’s worth noting that the nation seems to be establishing itself as a popular destination for sporting events: just witness the 2008 Champions League final, the Москва 2013 World Athletics Championships, Сочи 2014, the football World Cup in 2018…
Anyway, there’s no point in being all gloomy about the end of the Games for the next two and a half years, until the Olympic circus rolls into Rio: roll on the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympic Games!
An Early Bath 