“….and welcome back to the Jimandbang arena, where the action has not stopped. The two teams are now exhausted, but still determined and whilst it may look like a huge muddle, it’s really not that complicated. Betty, you competed at the highest level at this sport, albeit you never actually won an Olympic medal, can you explain what we should be looking out for and whether the rumpus over their uniforms is justified?”
“Well Claire, I only just failed on the medal front because of the drugs scandal and the six East Germans and the East Timor Ice Dance team, who had been supplying them with the performance-enhancing drug Zylohippodrax which as you know medically…..”
“I’m sorry to interrupt but I can see that the slide bikes are now on the edge of the arena, so what can you tell us about the earlier trouble?”
“Quite right Claire. The good news is that both East Germany and East Timor no longer compete at The Winter Olympics, or at least I haven’t seen them for over a dozen years now… sorry, the uniform rumpus is no more than a storm in a port and I think the Germans, not the East Germans who I think are now banned, have given themselves enough petard to hang themselves. Basically, they objected to the colour of the enamel paint used to cover the gimlet sockets, which Jurgen Hansup, their performance manager claimed was catching the cameras lights. But the Brits submitted their new design in 2012 when they received the full lottery grant for the sport and immediately built the three new defence helmets as approved by the Federation so that just means that the Germans have now reached a fork in the woods.”
“Betty, tell us about the melee that we witnessed, which might have confused our viewers.”
“Ohh that was nothing, Claire. The trouble was that the Koreans had requested a three-man change and the third referee failed to spot that they weren’t wearing their Cork Shangers correctly. As that is a safety violation, the OAR athlete Ivan Kutchyerkokoff claimed that the three should have been disqualified, but of course he himself shouldn’t have been on the ice as he had already been told to go home, after failing an eye test. That meant that the skaters, had been on their long skates for more than the permitted time and eventually the match ref, had to call for another end at the 10m mark. Of course, it was a disappointment, and for little Myleak, the Korean third puller, who had been selected for the team the day her entire family caught shingles, it was especially upsetting.”
“Yes Betty, I think we’ve got some film here of her crying, and it’s very hard to watch emotionally, when you remember the appalling journey she’s been on and the sacrifices she has had to make to get her entire family back from the brink.”
“Oh Claire that was very hard to watch, it’s left me absolutely drained every one of the eight times we’ve played it this morning.”
“I know what you mean Betty. But now we turn our attention to the British Ice Stone jumping competition and Jill Patel and her brother Algernon, put in a fabulous performance, with a season’s best performance for them of 2:52:05 over 42 metres, which put them into twelfth place. The Norwegian couple Oslog Sealflip and Heilo Skyvan took gold with a time of 1:21:13 over 632 metres, but for the plucky British pair, that was a very impressive performance, especially when you consider just how little support they had received financially. They did all their own training on the side of the road in Cumbria and they acclimatised themselves by doing their upper body work completely naked.. We’ll have film of that later, but now it’s time to go over to the big slide, where Jack Smith will be attempting a new bin-liner record.”
