Sadly in need of a five-ring fix

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LIKE a marathon runner crash-tackled by a mad Irishman, I’m feeling dissatisfied and just slightly cheated.

The Olympics may have finished but I haven’t finished with them.

I fear I’m suffering from Post-Olympics Depression, or POD. My wife calls me Rod with POD, and I fear I’m not alone.

In Brisbane, we have a history of slipping into a celebration slump. After Expo 88, Expo Anonymous was set up to deal with those who suddenly found their lives missing something once they could no longer queue outside the New Zealand pavilion six hours a day.

What does one do in one’s life when chicken dancing goes from being compulsory to cliched overnight.

Back then, the Queensland Council of Churches came to the fore and established a telephone support line for Expo addicts.

The dispirited and the downhearted tried to soften the blow of going cold turkey from the artificial snow of the Swiss pavilion by snapping up Expo souvenirs. You may not be able to take a monorail to nowhere, but you could always rewatch your Expo video or cover your sleeping grandmother in cornflour and pretend she was one of those statues.

Cynics scoffed when extreme Expo enthusiasts testified they had emotional breakdowns after those musical high divers took their last plunge.

Doubt or deny it, the reality remains that during Expo 88, fewer people sought treatment at our public hospitals. Who had the time to queue at the RBH when we were all busying queuing on the south side of the river?

Perhaps our current political competitors could learn some lessons from the experience. If you want to cut hospital waiting lists, simply encourage people to spend their time waiting somewhere else.

While I had youth on my side to help me endure the end of Expo, the end of Olympics has hit me hard.

They may not have been the best Olympics ever. Actually, they may not have even been the best Athens Olympics. But for 16 days, my life was complete, with a purpose defined by a desire to go stronger, faster and further and dictated by the Channel 7 programming directors.

When Tony Squires told me to stay tuned, I did just that. When Rebecca Wilson told me you wouldn’t believe what a fantastic day she was having hanging out with the athletes, I did my best not to believe her.

No longer did our house begin its morning ritual with a few hours of ABC Kids. Instead, it was straight on to women playing handball, volleyball, shotput or any other sport with balls just to get the blood flowing.

Blind, was I, to the sight of a desperate toddler wondering why the remote control, which strangely had lost its batteries, would no longer put the television on to Channel 2. Deaf, was I, too, to the pleadings of my small child demanding to know what had happened to Bananas in Pyjamas.

“They’re dead, kid. The rat ate them,” I informed her.

“You think that sucks, wait until you see the score the judges have given the Russian gymnasts.”

Not that switching our telly on to the Olympics all day and night prevented all forms of family bonding. Throughout the Games, I instructed my daughter on how to put one’s fist into the air and yell “Go!”

We yelled “Go!” for Jana, we yelled “Go!” for Petria, we yelled “Go! Go! Bloody Go!” for our women rowers.

My daughter’s best friend, a 21-month-old girl with a keen sport spirit, even managed to master “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi”, which for someone under two is quite an impressive thing to say, even if it’s just damn annoying for anyone over two.

For me, during the Olympics, too much Olympics was never enough. It didn’t have to be an event involving Australia. It didn’t even have to be a sport – I tuned in to watch the equestrian, for crying out loud, in which the horses do all the work and the person going along for the ride gets all the credit.

I even became addicted to the white-water races, where a group of plucky paddlers start at one end of a torrent and do their best to get the other end. As if they had any choice in the matter.

Now, if they had paddled upstream, there’s a sport.

My passion for the Games knew no limits. I watched Grant Hackett’s great victory every time Channel 7 showed it, on the hour, every hour, or at least the small bit they were willing to repeat without wasting valuable broadcast time on one of the greatest swims in history.

I even tuned in first thing in the morning, knowing the pain of putting up with the antics of the Sunrise set would be rewarded by the sensibility of our Hayley Lewis and an Athens update.

But, I have discovered a solution to my sorrow. In the last days of the Olympics, I shoved a tape in the VCR and poked the record button like a man possessed.

I taped snippets of cycling, bits of badminton and hours of hurdling. Now, whenever I feel the need for a five-ring fix, I just randomly pop in a tape of an event that I don’t particularly care about which finished long ago.

It’s just like watching the real thing.