Mascots

Mascots often make or break the atmosphere in an arena between events.

London 2012's Wenlock and Mandeville were pretty forgettable. One of them did a run at the long jump while we were waiting for Renaud Lavillenie to take his final few vaults and planted like a rock in a pond, which was quite entertaining, but otherwise they didn't add much.

Spike, the red UK Athletics Lion, was a bit wearing, like a loud and tipsy uncle who laughs loudly at his own jokes and insists that you pose for family photos. I'm not sure how Clyde, the green thistle-heided Commonwealth mascot, will slot into the Mascot Hall of Fame and we'll see what kind of mischief he gets up to in Glasgow.

But the daddy of them all in recent years was Berlino, the bear at the 2009 Berlin World Championships. He was comedy gold. Unlike the creepy dead-eyed sniper bear in Sochi, Berlino managed to convey slapstick genius, butter-wouldn't-melt innocence, Colin Jackson-esque confusion and the unrestrained joy of a month old puppy. He gave 400m hurdles champion Melaine Walker a piggy back and dropped her. He kept tipping over due to the weight of his head. He fell on top of javelin champ Steffi Nerius. He swung vaulter Anna Rogowska around like a hammer. And when hometown giant Robert Harting won the discus and ripped off his shirt, he swept up Berlino and carried him upside down by his feet around the 1936 Olympic Stadium that saw Jesse Owens defy the Nazis.

The mascot in Sopot this weekend is a seagull called Sopotek. He looks a bit like the Shooting Stars Dove from Above. My contacts in the arena tell me he has something of an eye for the ladeez. We'll see what he gets up to this weekend.

The blip is my dramatic reinterpretation of Berlino's Harting inversion, modelled by my own Berlino.