I tried to become an Olympic athlete at the last minute

At some point during Paris 2024, while sat on your sofa, you may find yourself asking ‘how hard can that be?’ Here, I answer that

There are 47 sports at this Olympics, but one clear winner for participation at home. To play you just need a television, a sofa and an inflated opinion of your own abilities. Here is how:
Perhaps this is what gives the Olympics their enduring appeal, the sense of often ordinary-looking people achieving transcendence. At a time when even Division Two county cricketers are ripped enough to appear on Love Island, the Games are relatable. So how hard can it be, really, to become good enough at a sport to represent Team GB? The first task is to narrow the field.
Many are out because the pool of competitors is too great. At 40, I have probably left it too late for a career in elite tennis. Others are too physically taxing. Water polo, for example, requires the ability to tread water for hours at a time while being punched in the head. Respect for my own safety takes sports like BMX, skateboarding and fencing off the table, and an allergy to horses sadly curtails a promising future in dressage.
That leaves four options: Archery, canoe slalom, shooting and breaking, aka breakdancing. I put my bow and arrow on the rack and press ahead with my Olympic dream in three chapters: canoe slalom, shooting and breaking. First up, the choppy waters of London’s Lee Valley White Water Centre.
There are two courses at this fine legacy venue of 2012. Both simulate rapids and invite/force paddlers to navigate a series of gates, suspended poles with just enough room for the vessel to pass through. Thankfully, we head for the one which does not start with a 20-foot drop into the water.
On TV you see canoeists and kayakers deftly navigating these courses in less than two minutes, pirouetting through gates with ease. In practice, it is challenging enough to propel yourself elegantly through the still water around the edges.
There is a lot to remember. You should enter with your canoe pointing upstream, then shift your weight downstream. If you hit one of the obstacles you lean in to maintain balance. Of course this all goes out of the window within seconds of my first run and I am underwater almost immediately.
There are 20-odd gates and I manage to make it through one, entirely accidentally, travelling backwards when attempting not to fall in again. My helmet hits a pole in the process, which would mean a two-second penalty in competition, although missing a gate entirely adds 50 seconds which means my finishing time was around six hours. “Thom the Olympian,” says my instructor Dave as I successfully manage to exit the boat on dry land without the assistance of pulleys.
Olympian paddlers review every training session on an iPad. I ask Joe Clarke, gold medallist at Rio 2016, what he would glean from my footage. “First and foremost, staying in the boat is key,” he says, with unwarranted tenderness. “A lot of people see it on the TV and think, ‘I can do that’, but, as you’ve found out for yourself, it’s a very difficult sport.”
He caught the canoeing bug (NB not an actual river-borne disease) as a child Scout, then was told he was too young to join his local Stafford & Stone Canoe Club. He was admitted eventually, after pleading his case via a school competition. Such doggedness has given him his career. “That’s how I thrive, off competition. You could give me the simplest task and put it in a competitive environment and I’ll want to be the best at it.
“You’ve been out there today in pretty good conditions. We go out some days and have to crack the ice on the water, you’ve got five layers on and you still can’t get warm, you can’t feel your hands. People don’t see that, they see the sun, the travel, all the good stuff. I think it’s that ability to keep coming back for more.”
Talent-deficit aside, I fear I lack the competitive edge necessary to trouble the Olympic selectors. What about a more modest aim, how long would it take to make it through every gate with weekly practice? “Maybe two or three years. It can be quite demotivating if you don’t realise how hard it is.” I’m out.
Maybe I went into canoeing undercooked? In preparation for a morning at Bisley Shooting Ground in Surrey, I watch a few videos with tips for the novice shooter. “Don’t assume the problem is the gun or the cartridges,” says one. Good advice.
I am not a gun guy. Due to a parenting bylaw I never even shot a toy version in the family home, although there might have been some experimentation during primary-school sleepovers. Sorry, Mum. This is certainly my first experience holding an actual rifle. Soon-to-be Olympian Lucy Hall is my coach, assuring me that the instrument I am holding is reliable. “There’s no recoil,” she promises. My tender shoulder and jaw say otherwise the next morning.
We start gently on clay discs moving straight, either away or towards our stand. I am encouraged to lean into the moment, get my weight forward and point the gun in a tight, forceful posture. Turns out shooting a gun is quite aggressive. Lucy rests a hand on my shoulder which initially I feel is for reassurance but actually think is to keep me steady.
After a dozen or so attempts, the timing becomes instinctive. It seems crass to ask someone to take score but I am fairly sure I nail six consecutive discs at one point. “Do you want to take my place on the Olympic team?” asks Lucy. We move on to a more challenging side-to-side flightpath where the shooter tracks the movement of the target with their gun and aims for the bottom corner. This largely eludes me. I manage to hit a few but with Lucy saying “now” at trigger-pulling time, which does not traditionally happen at the Olympics.
Olympic trap, Lucy’s discipline in Paris, ups the target speed to frightening levels. Competitors shoot five rounds of 25 across two days, 125 in total, and Lucy says she will need a score of 120 to reach the final. That is missing one target out of 25 in each round.
Based on my stunning performance on the range (on the easiest bit, with quite a lot of help) how long would it take me to master the far harder trap discipline? “You’re looking at about an eight to 12-year journey,” says Lucy. “There’s so much to learn, and it’s supposed to be hard.”
She practises three or four times per week for up to three hours per session and is in the gym most days for at least an hour. There is core-strength work but cardio too, to get her resting heart rate down as low as possible and prevent spikes when under stress. There is also “distraction training”, when she asks people to shout or kick bins behind her as she shoots or gets her sport psychologist to play loud music. He favours country, she does not.
As with canoeist Clarke, it is a fierce competitiveness which has driven her to the top of the sport, which she started when she was 11. “It’s having the drive to be the best, to see if you can get those marginal gains, and staying calm so you can deal with the stress and high-pressure situations,” she says. She tells me she loved shooting from the very first time she saw a target shatter. It is certainly satisfying, but I am not sure I felt the same buzz. One more try.
If I cannot break into breaking my Team GB dream may be over. Rhythmically I am OK, a competent drummer and a friends’ wedding-level DJ. It is the body coordination bit I struggle with. Will this scupper my breaking career? If so, Jamaal O’Driscoll is too polite to say.
We meet at the Fabric dance school in Birmingham. Before I begin my session, Jamaal demonstrates the basics. There is such grace to his fluidity of movement, allayed with the grunting of proper physical exertion. An artfully splayed palm bears all of his weight as he contorts into different poses. There is rather too much head-spinning for my taste, given I am about to give it a try. Broadly, shortness helps. At 5ft 9in, Jamaal is tall for a B-boy, so I am blaming my 6ft 0in for any underperformance.
I just about manage the most basic cross-step moves, which require little more foot coordination than the lap of a shop when trying out on a new pair of shoes. When we incorporate a spin and an attempt to land on one knee I am immediately off balance. 
Next Jamaal encourages me to try a “freeze” where I lean on the floor with my shoulder and attempt to push up my legs to get my hips above my head. “Use your head as balance,” he suggests. Sure. I collapse in a series of decreasingly dignified heaps.
So much of breaking is about personality and each competitor’s take on the artform. We attempt to hit some poses which sum up who we are, but the best I can manage feels like a mildly aggressive nap. I fear I look like David Brent lying down on a table when asked for a photo at his motivational-speaking gig. My colleagues in the office were keen for me to attempt to spin on my head, Jamaal deems this unwise and says it would require a risk-assessment form. How long has it been? About nine minutes. Is that enough? Absolutely.
Shockingly, it turns out I am not a breaking natural but Jamaal’s enthusiasm is infectious and some blatant flattery helps, too. “I was impressed by your switches. You said you were a drummer, when I started adding the rhythm for you, you stopped focusing on your movement and started getting your shape. It’s all about finding out what is that trigger for that person.
“It’s inclusive, accessible, cheap. Then on the artistic side there are people who have committed their life to it who now have the opportunity to benefit from it financially, and who can now say they’re Olympians and their parents can be proud of that.”
He says that anyone can get to a reasonable standard, because breaking offers such room for interpretation. How long it would take to pull off the power moves and freezes which he executes with ease but I found laughably difficult, could anyone reach that point? “Easy. Once you’re hooked and you’re going. Obviously there is a physical element to it, but if you commit to six classes for an hour you’re ready to do your first battle.” After an hour in Jamaal’s company I am unlikely to take that path, but I may be in the audience.
So let this be a lesson. Everything at the Olympics is harder than it appears, because those competing are making it look easy. There is immense talent, beyond the wildest imaginations of brilliance you could muster, and it is usually allied to an overwhelming will to win. Keep that in mind when you tune into the shooting from Los Angeles in 2028 and catch sight of 44-year-old rookie sensation Thom Gibbs.