The Everyman Olympics: Re-Galvanised

How 12 Events became EVERY Sport in the Olympics...

As the buzz of The Canoeing Challenge settled I started to envision putting together an event around my next task, so as to get more people involved all together in one glorious day...though this wasn't the only thing taking up my spare time: word of my tasks had started to get me noticed and this attention lead me to re-think the core idea at the very heart of my challenges - this is the story of how The Everyman Olympics became Re-Galvanised.

As you may know, this is how I first layed down the rules to myself:

• One challenge to be set every month for a year, based on a different Olympic sport

Because I work in a job where I travel around 35,000 miles per year by car, and have various trips abroad and would be organising the whole thing myself I thought that this would in itself be plenty to keep me busy.

You might also recall that my reasons for doing this series of tasks were purely targetted at weightloss - more specifically I wanted to lose a stone of the fat stuff.

Oh and there was the slight matter of beating my pal Carl in the race to lose this stone....some of us will already know how that story ended.

Back to the point in hand...

A few days after hooking up with Graham, who I'd met on The Cycling Challenge I received a phone call from Mike Miners, a journalist for the local paper - The Evening Echo.

Mike had heard of my sporting challenges through a mutual friend of his and Grahams and wanted to write a report on me.

I was already in training for my next event at the time and so after a telephone interview we agreed to meet at Southend Leisure & Tennis Centre for some photos to be taken of me in action.



The Everyman Olympian (Me)


A few days later I was staring at myself on Page 5, here's a link to Mike's great article:

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/8382831.Olympic_Games__I___m_in_training_for_every_event/

Literally the day after this came out I was contacted on Twitter by the very delightful Shana Pearlman, a producer for BBC Essex Radio no less!

Shana invited me onto the Dave Monk Show to be interviewed live on air - naturally I lept at the chance (being an 'Olympian' and all).

(Unfortunately for some stupid reason Blogger won't allow me to upload the recording I have of this interview - if anyone out there has any tips on how to get this on, please let me know)

Before I did this chat on the radio I looked back at the interview for The Evening Echo and realised that Mike Miner's had printed a quote from me which I hadn't really taken in:

“Originally it was a 12 month project, but now I hope to try every sport before the 2012 games in London.”

EVERY SPORT??!!!....I. Must. Be. Bonkers!

Realising that I'd clearly got excited in the moment, I took the bull by the horns, marched into BBC Essex Radio HQ and ran with it.

So there you have it, the London Olympics in 2012 will feature 26 Sports (though some are broken down into more events) - I've now completed 8 of them and have 20 months left to do the rest.

Here's a list of the sports I've yet to tackle:

Archery
Basketball
Beach Volleyball / Volleyball
Boxing
Diving / Swimming / Synchronised Swimming / Water Polo.
Equestrian - Dressage / Eventing / Jumping
Fencing
Football
Gymnastics - Artistic / Rhythmic / Trampoline
Handball
Hockey
Judo
Modern Pentathlon
Sailing
Shooting
Taekwondo
Triathlon
Wrestling.

If I'm going to achieve this I Need Your Help - leave your details in the comment box below or email me at theeverymanolympian@googlemail.com to find out how YOU can help me and get involved in The Everyman Olympics.

Thanks in advance,

The Everyman Olympian