The Last Word: Sex and sport, natural bedmates

• The sexy . . .

Now the Olympics are finished and all the medals have been awarded and the predictable fretting about how much money we should pour into the next campaign is petering out, we can turn our attention to other things.

But before that, we might take a minute to reflect on just how much sex the athletes were having in Beijing.

Probably lots, as it turns out.

In an astonishing article in The Times, British television commentator and former table tennis player Matthew Syed has lifted back the covers on the Olympic ideals of harder, faster, more please.

The venerable newspaper reckons the story has got more reaction than most in recent years.

• . . . and steamy . . .

"I am often asked if the Olympic village is the sex-fest it is cracked up to be.

"My answer is always the same: too right it is," Syed begins as he recalls his first Olympics in Barcelona in 1992.

"Women from all the countries of the world: muscular, virile, athletic and oozing oestrogen. I spent so much time in a state of lust that I could have passed out. Indeed, for all I knew I did pass out - in a place like that how was one to tell the difference between dreamland and reality?

"It was not just the guys. The women, too, seemed in thrall to their hormones, throwing around daring glances and dynamite smiles like confetti.

"No meal or coffee break was complete without a breathless conversation with a lithe long jumper from Cuba or an Amazonian badminton player from Sweden, the mutual longing so evident it was almost comical.

"It was an effort of will to keep everything in check until competition had finished.

"But, once we were eliminated from our respective competitions, we lunged at each other like suicidal fencers."

• . . . side of the Olympics

Syed said he spoke to a British runner in Beijing who reported that, when the swimmers finished their competition, it was like "an eruption" in the Olympic village.

It reminded the writer of a famous story from Seoul in 1988.

"There were so many used condoms on the roof terrace of the British team's residential block the night after the swimming concluded that the British Olympic Association sent out an edict banning outdoor sex.

"Here in Beijing, organisers have realised that such prohibitions are about as useful as banning breathing and have, instead, handed out thousands of free condoms to the athletes.

"If you can't stop 'em, at least make it safe."

Sex and sport have always been natural, er, bedmates.

But the thing about Syed's eye-opening piece that struck me was that he was neither a sprinter with washboard abs nor a swimmer with a swag of medals around his neck.

He was a ping-pong player.

And most ping-pong players look like me and ODT regional news editor Dave Cannan.

Brad Pitt, we ain't.

• Dumb, puerile, pathetic

Don't dismiss the New Zealand Olympic committee's decision to banish Corney Swanepoel, Cameron Gibson and Dean Kent from the village on the final night of the Games as an overreaction.

The twittish trio had decided it would be a prank of Olympic proportions to take a photo of a drunken team-mate snoozing on a toilet seat, and distribute it.

Frankly, it's the sort of juvenile rubbish you might expect from a schoolboy rugby team.

Kent is 29, for goodness' sake. Time to grow up, son.

• Next generation looking good

That was a remarkable performance from Danny Lee in the US amateur golf championship earlier this week.

While Tiger Woods has been busy rewriting the record book for the past 11 years, Lee has just ERASED Tiger's name as the youngest to win the tournament.

New Zealand now has legitimate reason to be excited about our special talents in the world's two glamour individual sports, golf (Lee) and tennis (Marina Erakovic).

Even if Erakovic has been in woeful form recently.

• Don't cry for the Taniwha

I've got very little sympathy for Northland as it contemplates its sacking from the Air New Zealand Cup.

The New Zealand Rugby Union created this unholy mess and, predictably, has dealt with it poorly by giving Northland and Tasman the bad news just two weeks into the season.

But it's a bit rich to hear the folks in kauri country bemoaning their poor treatment.

Northland, you will recall, couldn't win a game to save itself earlier this decade.

It finished dead last year after year but was saved by the promotion-relegation game, then - as now - a ludicrous concept that only worked for the hopeless team in the higher division.

Proven to be out of its depth in the top flight, Northland was saved only when HQ bizarrely decided to promote four teams out of the second division.

No, the Heartland Championship's now the place for the Taniwha.

And it would be nice if everybody stopped treating that marvellous competition as some sort of purgatory.

We love it in North Otago.

• First Carl, now Hamish

How appropriate that Hamish Bond was named the 1000th New Zealand Olympian in Beijing.

Bond is now based in the Waikato and his parents live in Twizel, but Otago can still claim him because he rows out of the North End club.

And his honour comes seven years after another Otago sports star, Carl Hayman, became the 1000th All Black.