I COULDN’T be more proud tonight when I saw Lizzie Yarnold had won Gold in the women’s skeleton event in Sochi. Interestingly the skeleton event has nothing to do with actual skeletons - apart from the fact that you could seriously damage yours by taking part!
I’m very proud of young Liz for getting our first Gold at the Winter Olympics - we don’t expect many, so we should savour this one as long as we can!
However for me, it’s not just pride in the actual achievement - as impressive as it was of course. I was delighted to hear that Lizzie has named her sled Mervyn.
An excellent choice of name, it really says ‘Britain’. It also doesn’t really sound precocious or in anyway expectant of success. Many will have named their sled ‘Power’ or ‘Lightning’ of ‘Jet’ (I realise now I’m just naming Gladiators), so when Merv actually clinches a medal, it’s like David beating Goliath!
I am rather partial to naming inanimate objects myself. In the Hitchings household for example, we have Little Dick the handheld Dyson, Horace the toy Owl, Barry the night light, Gordon the stand lamp, Albus the Audi, Cyril the Citroen, Big Dick the normal Dyson, Terence the Tumble Dryer and Archibold the iPad.
And Mark may roll his eyes when I first dish out the names, but he has adopted many himself. In fact sometimes our conversations could often sound like we’re holding a number of hostages or dead bodies:
“Did you leave Barry in the cupboard?”
“No, there wasn’t enough room with Little Dick in there.”
“Oh right, maybe I left him in the overnight bag when I was quickly trying to stuff Terence and get him turned on before we went out.”
I’ve never been given a Gold medal for my hoovering skills or for the way I empty and refill the tumble dryer. But just cause Mervyn happens to travel at 80mph down some snow track thing in front of millions of people, Lizzie gets a medal!
In all seriousness, congratulations Lizzie..and to her dad Clive incidentally, whose wonderful moustache and Indiana Jones style hat can only be forgiven when you’re the father of a Gold medal winning Olympian, or Tom Selleck.
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