For sale: Geraint Thomas' big wooden podium throne
Any Commonwealth Games host city knows the drill. For four years, there’s build-up – preparations to make, contractors to employ, tickets to sell, stadia to build – and then for a frenzied two weeks, you’re the centre of the (formerly colonised by the British) sporting world. Australia comes in and sweeps the medals. The United Kingdom is disunited. Canada is a superpower, rather than a nicer northern neighbour. And then… then it’s all done.
What next? Post-event blues, that’s what. All the tourists leave. Your city becomes the answer to the trivia question “who hosted the 2022 Commonwealth Games?”
If you’re the answer to that question – AKA, Birmingham – you could mull your fall from grace, or you could do something about it. Rather than letting the Comm Games trinkets rust and rot, the organisers are determined to let the glory of #Birmingham2022 live on a little longer … with a post-event garage sale that will “go back to the Games and fund important community projects, helping to create a legacy”.
At the ‘Memories Birmingham 2022’ website, there are numerous run of the mill pieces of memorabilia. You know the type – framed pictures of winning athletes, results sheet embedded next to the photo (£149). We have seen such souvenirs before. They have a place in the pool room, but mostly, we are bored by them.
So we – the Hypothetical Consumer – delve further. Memorial coins used for official coin tosses (£60, now even more exclusive because of the deceased monarch on one side). A “spectacular set” of Birmingham 2022 postal stamps in “incredible colour and the B2022 logo” (£249 for a total of 120 stamps, which seems like a bargain in this economy, with these postage rates). Replica Queen’s Baton Relay torches (1/3 scale, £499, RIP Her Maj).
Delving deeper still, we get to the sporting memorabilia: the likes of a signed netball from the gold medal match between Australia and Jamaica (£199), the match T20 cricket ball from a women’s pool game between New Zealand and Great Britain (£99), or a pack of 20 soiled shuttlecocks (£60).
Then, things get weird.
Do you want a 1.5 metre-high, purple rostrum to fire a starting pistol from? Would you like it to be Birmingham 2022 brand-compliant, promoting a luxury watch brand? Would you like to pay £499 for this unforgettable souvenir? Then it’s your lucky day…
What about a two metre tall fibreglass cow called Perry? The official mascot of the Games, “this impressive Perry statue” is wearing white sportswear and a gold medal, lurid pink hooves, purple cuffs, a humanoid form and a mosaic skin of colourful shapes.
There have been worse mascots and there have been much better ones, but only Perry is A) enormous and B) currently available to purchase for £1,999, for whatever reason someone might find compelling.
And then we get to the pièce de résistance.
If you were an attentive viewer of the time trial events, you might have found yourself taken by the rustic wooden thrones that the fastest riders waited on until the results were finalised. You’d have seen eventual gold medallist Rohan Dennis, chebs out on a big central throne. You’d have seen Fred Wright with a sports drink and a tracksuit on a smaller throne to his right, and Geraint Thomas bleeding from the knees looking wistful on a matching one to the left.
If you were a small subset of that time trial audience, you might have found yourself wondering where you can buy a podium throne of your own.
Good news:
The Gold Medal throne (a bigger, more intricate bargain at £499) seems, sadly, to have sold, but there are two of these compact cuties available if you want to cosplay as a tired Geraint Thomas or an elated Bradley Wiggins circa 2012.
Clear your Christmas list – Santa’s taking a trip to a Wonderful Wellingborough warehouse to pick up a throne.
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