BLOOD, SWEAT, GROCKLES AND THE MODERN PENTATHLON

I’m at my friend Alsira’s pool.

I’ve just done fifty lengths, shaken the water off, and bashed out fifty press ups. The lifeguard is impressed and asks me how I got on in Paris?

‘Pretty well,’ I reply, ‘Until my horse ran off in the show jumping. But I nailed it in the pool, ran everybody through in the fencing, and gave that Egyptian bloke who won it a damned good run for his money in the laser pistol shooting jog.’

He hasn’t a clue what I’m talking about, of course, but he’s a polite, well brought-up lad and laughs respectfully.

There’s a couple of wannabe MILFS from Manchester, tattooed legs dangling in the water, who give me a mock clap as I complete a three-minute plank.

I play the nice guy, and put them out of their misery.

‘Young wife,’ I say. ‘Duty of responsibility to stay on top of things.’

Another perfect day in my Paradise Fantasy Island.

*

Except it’s not? The reality is somewhat different.

August in Marbella is absolute hell. I never thought I’d say it, but I’d rather be in Grodków.

I did warn you that I was going to moan about the Grockles and the heat in my next blog. If you’re not quite sure what a Grockle is, click here.

The temperature has been hovering between 37 and 42 degrees for the last five weeks, and shows no sign of cooling down. And as for humidity – it’s off the scale. The only breeze is the Calima, the hot one which comes from Africa bearing fine red sand from the Sahara, lifted into the atmosphere and transported by the prevailing winds.

Absolutely. Ghastly.

The place is packed. The Grockles even have the nerve to fill up our favourite local restaurant – Mr Zang’s Kyoto restaurant, and sometimes we can’t get a table.

But the worst thing about Grockles is that their stupidity. Remember last year when my wife worked 26 hour, 8-day weeks as a high-end rental property manager for a friend?

Yep? Remember she said that she’s never do that again? Well, she’s doing it, and I hardly ever see her because idiots fake break-ins to cover up their stupidity when they lose a set of keys, teenage girls get stuck in the bathroom and SIRI can’t get them out, and the air conditioning units in all of the properties she manages have broken down at some point.

So, for the last couple of weeks, to duck the heat and the Grockles, I’ve had a couple of cheeky hours of air con at home, watching a spot of Olympic action over lunch.

If you know me, you’ll know that hitherto I’ve had zero interest in the Olympics. It’s people I’ve never heard of doing sports I have no interest in. The four-yearly exception being the black fellas’ 100-yard dash (am I allowed to say that?) and women’s Beach Volleyball. And maybe a spot of rowing, because Blighty is jolly good at it. In my opinion, there should also be a rowing event for illegal immigrants because they’d be quite good at it too… okay, that was a joke.

But this year I discovered something that really floated my boat – the Modern Pentathlon, which I’d joked about with the pool wallah.

If you’re not entirely sure what this is, let me enlighten you. It kicks off with a Fencing ranking round. Here all contestants fight each other (not at the same time) and that sorts out the men from the boys. After this is Show Jumping – I’ll come back to this in a minute, as this has a rather quirky and sinister twist to it. Next up is a 200-metre freestyle thrash in the pool, then there’s another bout of fencing, in which the last placed entrant from the first round goes against the guy at the top of the list. You advance until you’re eliminated, and the last man standing with blood on his sword wins.

Finally … drumroll … the most exciting bit: the Laser Run. The athlete with the most points from the other events starts first, and each successive athlete then starts with a delay of one second for each point by which they trail the leader. Athletes run 3000 meters, stopping four times to shoot at targets with a laser pistol, and they don’t get to join the race again until they’ve hit the target five times. If they’ve not managed to do this after 50 seconds, they are allowed to carry on. The winner is the first to cross the line.

It’s a bloody good event, and I’d have loved to have had a go at it about forty years ago.

But let’s go back to the Show Jumping, and remember I said it has a rather quirky and sinister twist to it?

Well, here’s the thing – you don’t get to ride your own horse. You’re allotted a random beast, and given twenty minutes to persuade it not to hurl you into a fence in the middle of the arena. And I can tell you from my own painful experience – not all horses are the same, when it comes to jumping over obstacles with randommers on their backs. Some are genuine, placid beasts, who will do their best for you. But some are nasty bastards – nasty bastards who will do anything in their power to unseat you. So, there is a huge component of luck in this element, but … like the other elements, it sorts out the sheep from the goats.

This year, an Egyptian guy called Ahmed Elgendy won the men’s event, and Hungary’s Michelle Gulyas took home the gold in the women’s competition.

But now the Olympics are over, I have nothing to watch until the cricket starts again. I mean the proper cricket – the test series against Sri Lanka, and not the mickey-mouse cricket for people with short attention spans who don’t like cricket.

Right, I’m off to bash out a couple of ks in the pool, and bullshit about fantasy Olympic glory.

Hasta pronto, chic@s!