A sport is for life not just the Olympics

You have to wonder if the BBC have any staff left in the UK as they cover every cough and snort at the Olympics. We are still on the sports that pop up on telly every four years and then, as far as TV are concerned, go into hibernation in some cave in the hills until the next Olympics but there still seems to be a BBC person on every street corner and a commentator and tame expert, plus interviewer, with every GB competitor.

Watching presenters enthusing about names and people they had never even heard of until they were handed a press pack with their media centre bacon buttie and coffee that morning can have its moments though as they pretend they have intimate knowledge of the 60kg auto gear change 68 spoke synchronised space hopper mountain bike balancing world championships held in a field in Latvia last March - we came 17th after being penalised for an undersize mullett.

But if the BBC thinks it is worth spending some £3 million in licence payer money - that's 21,505 colour licences by the way and that is without the exes and incidentals for the 437 people in Beijing on the world's biggest jolly - then it would seem only logical that it has some sort of interest in the sports it studiously ignores - apart from Cowes Week and Henley of course - for 206 weeks out of every 208.

We have sent out news readers - perhaps the light is better for reading in China - and all manner of media luvvies yet once they are back and we have endured the documentary equivalent of the holiday snaps and videos the sports they have been enthusing about and waving the flag for will be dropped like stones.

Some sports are not televisual, some are far more interesting for participants then spectators but if the Beeb is happy to shell out millions and fly two jumboloads of staff to watch them they could at least give them a mention, perhaps in a magazine round up between the repeats - sorry, second chances to see - and endless variations on the celebrity theme, celebrity brain surgeon or 747 pilot or whatever. After all they are not exactly awash with any other sport as they pick over the bones left by Sky, Setanta and even the commercial channels. A sport is for life not just the Olympics.