Almost had the bronze

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A photograph of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt is projected onto the Houses of Parliament in London on Thursday. (PETR DAVID JOSEK / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Missed it by that much!

As you may have already guessed, I am referring here to the Olympic bronze medal in the 100-metre sprint.

Get ready to be impressed, because my personal best time of 17.6 seconds means I missed winning bronze in the flagship race of the Games by just five (bad word) seconds.

Of course, that's assuming I was competing in 1896, which is when Alajos Szokolyi, a physician from Hungary, nabbed third place with a time of 12.6 seconds at the Summer Games in Athens, the first international Olympics of the modern era.

Historically speaking, Szokolyi finished in a dead heat for third with Francis Lane of the U.S., and they didn't actually give out bronze medals back then, but still!

I went head to head with Szokolyi and other Olympic greats this week while sitting at my computer, sipping coffee, eating doughnuts and playing Could You Be A Medallist?, a cool interactive game on the website of the Guardian, Britain's famed national daily newspaper.

The game lets you plug in your personal best time in four events -- the 100 metres, the 10-km run, the 100-metre freestyle swim and the bicycle road race -- then watch as a video character representing you works up a cyber-sweat against the all-time Olympic greats.

At the end of a race, it compares your time to the best times from athletes throughout history and tells you whether, at any point, you would have earned a spot on the Olympic podium.

Why did a big-shot newspaper like the Guardian create a goofy game with chunky pixel-style graphics just like the games your parents played on their Ataris back in 1978 while wearing tie-dye T-shirts and bell-bottom jeans?

I assume they wanted to honour the Olympic movement and make the world a better place. Just kidding. Like me, they obviously have way too much time on their hands.

But that's not the point. The point is, here's your chance to capture an Olympic medal without wasting time on useless activities such as training. In each event, after picking an on-screen character and your flag, you plug in, as honestly as possible, your best time for that race.

In the 100 metres, I input 17.6 seconds. Have I ever run 100 metres that fast? I don't have a clue, but I assume a propane barbecue could finish in that time if it had wheels and was parked on a gentle decline.

So I lost to Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who took the gold with his 2008 run in 9.69 seconds, but I came within spitting distance of Alajos Szokolyi and had the thrill of watching all the other video runners zip out of sight while my avatar plodded along at the speed of airport luggage.

In the 100-metre freestyle swim, I even managed to finish behind Equatorial Guinea's Eric Moussambani Malonga, nicknamed Eric the Eel at the 2000 Summer Games after he painfully churned his way to a tragic time of 1:52.72, more than twice that of his rivals.

The big news was that my personal best of 2:45 -- yes, I was a competitive swimmer -- means I missed out on a silver medal by one minute and 22 seconds in 1896, the year that medal went to Austrian swimmer Otto Herschmann, who later won a silver in fencing in 1912.

The 250-km bicycle road race was especially tough on me due to the fact I do not ride a bike. After estimating the time it takes to finish your average bike trip, the computer calculates how long it would take you to cycle 250 kilometres.

I guessed my best time at 10 minutes for two kilometres, provided someone was waiting at the finish line with a cold beer. Fortunately, the computer speeds the race up and you do not have to watch in real time.

Still, I was able to go into the kitchen, make coffee, then return to the computer and watch my avatar pedal all by himself, finishing in 20 minutes, 50 seconds, about the time it would take to watch every Star Trek film featuring William Shatner.

In 1896, I would have been a scant 10 hours and nine minutes away from stealing the bronze from Edward Battell, a servant at the British Embassy in Greece. Unlike me, Battell worked for a living, prompting complaints he was "not a gentleman" and therefore "not a true amateur."

Finally, in the gruelling 10-km run -- which I find exhausting just watching on TV -- I "guesstimated" I'd finish in one hour, 32 minutes, based on Googling the average time for running that distance, then multiplying it by my age and weight.

Again, all the other racers vanished almost instantly and I watched for an eternity as my video athlete chugged away, as lonely as an environmentalist in Alberta.

In the end, shockingly, I fell 59 minutes, 38 seconds short of winning the bronze in 1912, the year it went to Finnish distance runner Albin Stenroos.

Stenroos would NEVER have dreamed of breaking the rules, whereas I exaggerated my times wildly.

So I am a big cheater and not worthy of an Olympic medal. Unless you're talking about badminton, of course.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca

Just do it

SEE if you've got the right Olympic stuff by Googling the Guardian, clicking on London 2012, then scrolling down to Could You Be A Medallist?

Or just click this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/interactive/2012/jul/23/could-you-be-a-medallist

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 3, 2012 A2