Get all your mates round. Get the beers in. Get the foam fingers out. The sporting event of the calendar is back, baby. Book the month off work. Buy all the tie-in merch. Fuse yourself to the sofa. Invest in all the narratives. Laugh, whoop, weep, get inspired. The International Army Games are only bloody back!
What do you mean, “eh?” The International Army Games, mate, come on. The big competition in Russia, where 19 nations – including China, Serbia and Iran – send along teams to pit their weapons against one another to assert their military might, on live television.
While the tawdry and frankly basic ‘Olympics’ (also on at the same time, apparently) is about such obsolete feats as ‘who can run the fastest’ and ‘who can spin around and throw a plate the furthest’, the International Army Games has the infinitely more relevant: ‘which tank can blow up the most stuff', ‘which sniper could most decisively kill you from the farthest range’, ‘which fighter jet would cause the most devastating destruction’ and, err, ‘which cooks could prepare the tastiest meal during a skirmish.’
I think we can all agree that the future of spectator sport will be watching which means of mechanised death will most effectively rain down on us in the event of a massive war, instead of these boring ‘track and field’ events where human endeavour triumphs and nothing explodes. It’s the apocalypse-rendered-spectacle, and it’s infinitely more exciting than finding the nearest body of water and staring at it until the sea levels rise and sweeps everything away.
For anyone out there who thinks “this is definitely my bag”, you can catch all the action on a live webstream here, and hand yourself into the relevant authorities here.
