RICHARD ORD: Rio 2016: It's 'Faster, Higher, Skimpier!'

The Olympics motto is '˜Faster, Higher, Stronger' .. when it comes to the male Team GB divers' trunks they can now add '˜Skimpier' to the maxim.
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They should have a motto of their own: ‘Smaller, Tighter, Skimpier.’

Those eye-watering trunks are the only sporting garments that double as a medical tourniquet. (I read that in The Lancet.)

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And what, can anyone tell me, is the score with those diver’s towels? Why do they have to be skimpy too?

I know some of the lesser sports struggle with funding, but you’d think they’d stretch to luxurious fluffy bath towels. Instead, the divers have to make do with squares of material no bigger than a large handkerchief. Pitiful.

A work colleague pointed out that they are not towels but shammies (or chamois leather to you and me).

Dear me. Times really are hard. It explains why you never see them shampooing their hair in the showers or scrubbing their backs with a loofah. Can’t afford it.

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I expect it’s the same story with the women’s beach volleyball. Judging by the frugal use of material to make their team kits, money must be in short supply. I expect it’s the same story for the men’s beach volleyball teams. If anyone’s watched the men, please write in and let me know.

It’s perhaps a godsend that the women’s hammer throwers are well supported financially. The women in that competition were dressed in Lycra long johns and big roomy vests. If the hammer throwers had to squeeze into the beach volleyball kits, well, it would be some sight and, at a push, an Olympic sport in itself.

Our girl Sophie Hitchon grabbed a bronze in the hammer, but couldn’t get near gold medal winner Anita Włodarczyk who reportedly scoffed eight boiled eggs for her breakfast before producing a world record throw. A fantastic performance, but you wouldn’t want to sit next to her on the team bus back to the hotel.

In the Ord household, the Olympics motto of Faster, Higher, Stronger has served only to deflate my ego.

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My eldest son, Bradley, 15, claims to have me whupped in all three.

He has for some time now been a faster runner and, after filling out this summer, proved himself to be stronger in the time-honoured tradition of the beach piggyback challenge. I picked him up and staggered a few yards down the beach with him on my back, while he jogged back with me on his back, barely breaking sweat.

Faster and Stronger, but what about Higher? Was our boy taller than his dad?

At a family barbecue this weekend, the claim was put to the test with me and the boy standing back to back with my brother as the judge. (After years of sibling rivalry, my young bro was possibly the least independent adjudicator, but there you go.)Our kid managed to get revenge for years of Chinese burns and wedgies, by declaring Bradley taller than his dad. He was now Stronger, Faster, Higher. Another parenting watershed moment had been reached. Slower, Lower, Weaker … the inevitable result of the parenting Olympics.