Tasha Dhanraj gets caught up in Olympic fever

Oh I am such a hypocrite. After weeks of going on and on about how pointless the Olympics are and how I don’t care and how annoying they are going to be for everyone, I’ve been glued to the constant sport coverage on BBC1.

I know the names of Olympians who have partaken in sports that last week I didn’t even know existed. I’ve been keeping track of the medal league table. I’ve pressed the red button to check in on how the shot-put was going.

For a girl who hated sports day so much at secondary school that I took a book and hid behind a hedge to avoid it, I’ve been getting very excited about what is essentially sports day on an international scale.

The London 2012 Games have been about “Inspiring a Generation”. To be honest, I’ve not felt inspired. I’ve spent every evening watching the different sports with a handful of Pringles in one hand and Maltesers in the other. I’m still no closer to joining an athletics club than I am to taking part in a Battle of Balaclava re-enactment. They haven’t inspired, but they’ve certainly excited.

I did try to resist it all. I tried to stick to my guns about not caring, I promise. I watched the opening ceremony because I figured that if it was inspired by a Shakespeare poem then there was unlikely to be too much sport. Unfortunately, that got me feeling disgustingly patriotic, which led to a passing desire for Britain to do quite well. Before I knew it I was watching synchronised diving and thinking “Oh no – look at the splash on that. They’ll definitely not get near the nine points they need for that.”

“This could be seen a quarter-life crisis”

I know this must all be quite worrying for my friends and family. Such a huge change in my personality from olympiphobe to olympomaniac could easily be seen as a precursor to some kind of quarter-life crisis. I can only hope that this sport adoration is just a temporary affliction.

I’m sure by October I will be back to rolling my eyes when someone refers to “we” when they talk about the football team they support and using the sports section of the newspaper to make papier mache. But still, for now I shall be engrossed by the spectacular limits of the human body and talking about Team GB as though their achievements are reflections of my own brilliance.