Well, here’s a nice change from watching people sliding. We can watch people flying. The ski jumping individual competition at the Winter Olympics unfolds today. He who can fly the farthest wins, especially if he can make the Telemark landing.

But never mind the technicalities. What matters is flying. I have long held the belief that all the non-confrontational sports are about defying gravity: making something soar, better still, soaring yourself. But ski jumping goes beyond them all, you come off that ramp and you really do fly.

The idea is to spring from the bottom of the board and make yourself an aerofoil, so that the pressure difference between your upper and your lower surfaces sustains you.

These birdy-boned daredevils, frighteningly young, with remote expressions, hurl themselves into the abyss from which their skills alone can save them. There is a peacefulness about it. You gain metres not by violent movement but by holding an otherworldly stillness, maintaining your wing as the world rushes past below.

Costume drama
Swimming remains an example to all sports: a sport that dared to stick two fingers up at money and privilege and return to its basic principles. It has abandoned shiny hi-tech, go-faster, muscle-aiding suits and gone back to proper swimming costumes. Swimming has become a test, not of technology but of swimming. The times when records fell like autumn leaves has been set aside.

It has courageously thrown a double-six and started again this year, and this weekend, in Swansea, Great Britain take on Germany in a Duel in the Pool. One to watch is the thrilling talent Elizabeth Simmonds, who last weekend recorded the second-fastest time by a swimmer in a proper swimming cozzie in the 200 metres backstroke.

If this form holds up, she should win her race at the Duel. And of course, she is already a hot prospect for another swimming gala that will be held in this country, the one in London in 2012. She is a rare talent, one of those born-to-swim athletes whose grace and poise in the water makes swimming seem the most enviable sporting discipline of them all.

Twenty20 vision
Twenty20 remains the shortened form of cricket worth watching; the only reason the 50-over format retains its prominence is because the administrators are aware that you can sell more advertising during the course of 100 overs than you can in 40. No one has worked out that three hours of brilliance is more compelling than a full day of so-so cricket.

This weekend England and Pakistan contest the first of two Twenty20 matches and we can look for wacky batting, courageous spin bowling and classical wicketkeeping. Here the bits-and-pieces man has no place: the true beauty is that the game rewards the truly talented rather than the worthy bodgers.

England go into this match after a thrilling last-ball defeat against themselves: the second team shaded the first with a four on the last ball. There were four South Africans in the two teams. I wonder how many South Africans will line up against Pakistan. One South African can be regarded as good fortune; two South Africans looks an appalling failure of the English sporting infrastructure. But four?