Getting away with anything...

I had a strange day yesterday, in recovery mode for most of the morning following a rather heavy Saturday session, cut my Dad's hair (to be blogged further another time maybe), did a bit of birthday prezzie shopping on-line (oh dear...) and generally very little else. As a consequence, I missed the London Marathon which I usually try and catch.

I can't admit to being a huge sports fan and couldn't usually give a monkeys' how the athletes get on, but I'm always really impressed to see the thousands of people running to raise money for good causes. This year however, two athletes caught my attention long after the race had finished.

Firstly, while catching up on some reading over the weekend I saw on Birdman's blog that Kelly Holmes apparently wouldn't start the London Marathon this year when they refused to pay her £20,000! She has since denied the story this evening on BBC News which I hope is the truth as otherwise she will have gone from heroine to zeroine in my books for that sort of attitude - what happened to the "people's athlete" we saw winning the medals last year?

Worse still, Paula Radcliffe was estimated to earn between £275,000 and £600,000 - how can that be money well earned? Although it was possibly enough to spur her on to keep trying instead of giving up if it looked like she'd only get second place *flashback to Athens*.

I heard today that this time, she's really done us proud, not by winning (I think I could run a lot faster with those sort of incentives!) no, she managed court that little bit of extra press attention by taking a piss on national TV - BBC no less. Gee, why won't the press leave these people alone? Because they keep pulling stupid stunts like this. Don't even get me started on footballers...

I appreciate a lot of sports people have limited career spans, but they can earn fantastic money for the short time they are doing something they purport to love. In my opinion, we should keep events like the London Marathon for creating revenue for truly deserving causes...