THE OLYMPICS ARE COMING!

The world maybe sort of  gripped by Olympic fever soon - if Covid will allow it - as the Games commence in Japan. 

I'm not a sport person by any means but having read that Karate will be included this time, incorporating Kata, I am intrigued and would love to see some Olympic Shotokan or Wado Ryu. Regular readers will know that I was nuts about martial arts as a young teenager and I even considered running away to a Zen Monastery in Northumberland!

I've seen quite a lot of live martial arts in my youth including Judo demos and exams in Stretford, Aikido with Chiba Sensei in Chorley, Wing Chun with Sifu Joseph Cheng in Preston and the pinnacle, a huge Wushu spectacular at Belle Vue in Manchester, which was mind-blowing.

I'd have loved to have seen my old Karate and Kung Fu heroes at an Olympic Games: Gichin Funakoshi, Morihei Ueshiba, Keinosuke Enoida, Jhoon Rhee, Ip Man, Jimmy Wang Yu, Joseph Cheng,  Angela Mao, Roald Knutsen, Donn F. Draeger, Mike Finn, Jim Kelly and of course Bruce.

Still, I look forward to a new crop of Karateka and Judoka pounding the mats in their spiritual home, Japan.

Other sports new to the Games this year include climbing - which I would watch - skateboarding, surfing and baseball/softball.

Like the sunshine World Cup in 1970, I was hooked as a kid by the Olympics that came in 1972. I was 11 years old.

I remember how everyone was just amazing there. Superhumans with athletes like Kip Keno, Nelly Kim and Olga Korbett, who have stayed with me ever since. 

I got totally into collecting stickers for a cool sticker book from those Games in 1972. Do you recall those games? Did you have this sticker book?

Are you taken by the Olympic flame readers?

Published by Esso, my Dad got me the stickers for the book when he filled up the Zephyr or Ford Granada. I was 11 when it came out and it remains my quintessential Olympics possession