I watched the 2026 Winter Olympics in the same spirit as I view programmes about extreme travel and exploration. By seeing someone on screen compete in risky activities, I feel as if I’ve done them by proxy. Having gained insight into how they’d make me feel, I can tick them off my bucket list. Phew!
I was daily amazed by anyone who trained and disciplined their body to the point of superhumanity. Not to mention developing the emotional strength to deliver their best in front of a global audience. Yet even for such superlative athletes, their best was not always enough. One bad landing in an otherwise perfect performance could and did snatch gold from a dead cert’s grasp. Each event yields only three medals.
Yet the crowds showed as much, if not more, support for athletes who scuppered their chance of a podium place. I was watching live when Team USA’s top downhill skier Lindsay Vonn took a catastrophic tumble requiring her to be airlifted off the course. The horrified crowd, silenced by the severity of her fall, gave her a standing ovation as the air ambulance arrived.
Not only American fans, but everyone present, including her rivals, was visibly anxious for Vonn’s well-being. For the tearful Breezy Johnson, going on to win the gold Vonn was striving for must have been bittersweet.
Vonn was deemed too badly injured to be placed inside the chopper, travelling to Innsbruck Hospital suspended beneath it. I’m sure I wasn’t the only spectator constantly refreshing their news feed until they announced her injury was not life-changing. Fortunately, she’d sustained only a broken leg, albeit it severe enough to require three subsequent operations.
Vonn, 41, still considered herself a winner. Aiming for a courageous comeback, she had earlier posted on Instagram, “While I can’t guarantee a good result, I can guarantee I will give it everything I have. But no matter what happens, I have already won.”
She was right.
All Olympic athletes are winners, as are we who watch, and anyone else who celebrates the ideals of the Olympic movement: “excellence, respect and friendship”.
According to the Olympics.com website, these qualities “constitute the foundation on which the Olympic movement builds its activities to promote sport, culture and education with a view to building a better world… This is the idea of setting your rivalries aside. There is more that unites us than divides us.”
Although the 2026 Winter Olympics will be over by the time you read this, I hope their spirit lingers.
How refreshing if Olympic principles could be applied to world government. That would put paid to tiresome and destructive political backbiting, financial greed, all forms of prejudice, superfluous wealth, and poverty.
Anyone up for forming an official Olympic Party? You’d certainly get my vote.
This post first appeared in the March 2026 edition of the Tetbury Advertiser.
In Other News
Last Wednesday, I was excited to attend the first rehearsal for my next murder mystery play, which I wrote for the Hawkesbury Drama Group, my local amateur dramatics company. It will be performed on 24th and 25th April in Hawkesbury Village Hall, and tickets are already on sale – see details on poster below.
This is my second murder mystery play, the first being The Importance of Being Murdered, which I’ve since turned into a novel, to be published on 26th March by Boldwood Books. Click here to pre-order your copy now.
Meanwhile I’m writing the fourth in the Cotswold Curiosity Shop series: Death at the Village Garden Party. Boldwood Books have also suggested I write a fifth in this series, Death at the WI. (WI = Women’s Institute – more about that here: www.thewi.org.uk.) I haven’t yet revealed this to my local WI, although, knowing them, they’re likely to suggest all sorts of ideas to help me along with that one!
What I’m Reading
When I was a child, some of my favourite books were by Noel Streatfeild, author of such classics as Ballet Shoes, fondly describing the lives of the three Fossil sisters, so called because they were adopted by their carer Sylvia’s paleontologist Great Uncle Matthew, aka Gum, on his travels around the world. One of the compelling features of Streatfeild’s books is that they include characters that different kinds of readers will relate to. Only one of the sisters, Posy, is a budding ballerina. Pauline is an aspiring actor. Petrova, who hates both dance and drama, wants to become an aeroplace pilot. (As Ballet Shoes was published in 1936, Petrova’s passion was probably inspired by Amelia Earhart, who tragically disappeared in 1937.)
My absolute favourite Streatfeild story was her fictionalised memoir, A Vicarage Family, in which the middle sister, Vicky, is determined to be a writer, while her older sister’s passion is art. No prizes for guessing which one I identified with.
Fun fact: the original edition of Ballet Shoes was illustrated by Noel Streatfeild’s real-life illustrator sister, Ruth Gervis.
90 years after it was published, Ballet Shoes continues to be hugely popular with readers of all ages. A new National Theatre production has received rave reviews.
Here’s my review of the first Susan Scarlett novel that I’ve read so far. I expect to read many more!
Babbacombe’s by Susan Scarlett
Having only just discovered that one of my favourite children’s authors, Noel Streatfeild, wrote a dozen romance novels for grown-ups, I chose this one as my first venture into her adult fiction because I was so taken by the cover – a cross-section of an old-fashioned department store that reminded me of a doll’s house. (Dean Street Press’s branding for this collection is really striking.)
It’s very much a product of its era, when respectable girls saved themselves for marriage, and didn’t aspire to rise beyond the class they were born into. However, the warmth of the characterisation, the vividness of the setting, and the relatable dilemmas that drive the plot, are all familiar from her children’s fiction, and work just as well at this level.
A sweet, heartwarming, escapist story – dated, it’s true, but still an enjoyable read.
