Kids, Don't Try This at Home — Olympic Edition

(Photo: DAVID HOLT)

Am in London for work and, as always, delight in reading the newspapers here. From today’s Telegraph, my favorite article:

Accident and emergency departments have seen a 15 per cent rise in sports injuries as an unfortunate side effect of Olympic fever, figures show. Young men and boys are the most likely to be treated and peak times are Saturday afternoons and lunchtime Sundays. The figures indicate more people may be taking up sport in the run up to the Euro 2012 football tournament and the London Olympics. However more are ending up needing emergency treatment after knocks, cuts, sprains and strains, broken bones and head injuries, officials NHS figures show.

When I was a kid, my friends and I staged all kinds of mock-Olympic games. I don’t remember any sport-related injuries per se. But I do recall that, in the process of turning a hayfield behind my house into a decathlon course, my friend Carl James and I very nearly chopped off some limbs while wrestling the lawnmower over a patch of earth that was plainly not meant to be mowed.