The ever lovely Vicky is one of the Chairman's most frequently mentioned athletes.
I admire her ability and the fact of course she has won Olympic Gold. I also like that fact she clearly winds up that simply ghastly "big boned" Aussie Anna Meares.
Indeed, while I am on Meares, the woman is borderline insane. Never in my life have I seen any sportsperson so utterly obsessed with one competitor. Vicky can take or leave Meares. Clearly she is not impressed with her. She does after all appear to be an entirely bitter, one dimensional buffoon. And what I also suspect bothers Vicky is that Meares appears to spend every waking moment, and no doubt in her sleep too, thinking, talking, obsessing about our Vicky. It is bizarre. And unsettling for Vicky, who seems a peaceful, unconfrontational soul.
Go on, check yourself. Meares has not done one interview, NOT ONE, without talking about Vicky. Just yesteday she was on the box again, talking about how pleased she was she "got one over Victoria Pendelton". She said this before the fact she also won a world championship gold. It is truly bizarre and does go some way to explaining why Vicky seems to give Meares a wide berth.
But... as regulae readers will know, it is my view that Vicky has rather taken her eye off the ball. She is a classic case of the British athelete getting gold at the Olympics (not that that is a long list of course) and then watching her career go downhill for the next 3 years.
I lie awake wondering why this is. It happens so often. Olympic Gold (hooray) and British athletes just seem to forget entirely what got them there and fall into the hateful trap of lame D-list english celerbity. It smacks of a culture of defeat and a lack of expectation. It enfuriates me. Why is it only England that suffers this? When an Aussie wins gold, it seems to motivate them more (though to be fair, Steph Rice, bless her, is a classic exception to the rule) In England, it is licence to get pissed for 3 years.
Well Vicky made a lame stab at carrying on, but she has fallen well down the pecking order, even within the British team. Meares clearly has her number while isnt there some vast Chinese girl who now beats her too?
Vicky, like so many before her, did a few FHM shoots (why cant Jessica Eniss do one hey? Come on FHM, get that chequebook out), flogged some cereal or other and just larked about, wasting her talent and the huge funding from the lottery and Sky she is still taking. I have long offered her my advice - get dowh the gym love and start working again.
Well today, in an interview in the Daily Failygraph, she did just that. She has now stated she is going off radar for a year to get herself into shape.
I am thrilled by this, not because I think she will win gold. I don't. The Aussies are going to win every cycling gold as I have already predicted, purely to annoy the host country at the Olympics, but at least if gives Vicky a fighting chance of beating Meares once more.
And if truth be told, of every single event at the Olympics, save for perhaps the British rowing 4 beating those pesky kiwis, there is no other event I will be watching more closely. Should Vicky beat Meares in the Olympics, I will be happy, even if that is the only gold we win.
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