OLIVER'S TWIST with Pete Oliver

CYCLING, haven't you always loved it ?

Clay pigeon shooting -- massively under-rated.

And three-day eventing ? Never gets the acclaim it deserves.

That's what you'd think given the way we have celebrated our medal winners in the early days of the Sydney Olympics.

But let's not knock it or feel embarrassed that the majority of us won't give a hoot about the self-same competitors for the next four years. (As long as the Lottery fund distributors are a little more faithful).

It makes a wonderful change to be celebrating British glories, instead of knocking our heroes and mocking our lack of success.

What makes it even better is that the early batch of winners that have given us our best start to the Games for yonks are all Ordinary Joes who have worked their socks off without mass media exposure or massive pay cheques to go with it. They are unsung heroes now rightly leading the chorus line -- at least until Jonathan Edwards, Colin Jackson and Denise Lewis hopefully strike gold on the track.

With football in full swing and the cricket season enjoying a magnificent swan-song thanks to Nasser Hussain and his boys, the Olympics snook up almost unnoticed for me.

I'm sorry to admit that without a Seb Coe, Steve Cram, Linford Christie, Sally Gunnell or Roger Black, I wasn't exactly counting down the days to the Games.

But a bloke on a bike, apparently made in a garden shed in Devon, changed all that.

Gold medal winner Jason Queally was an instant hero and suddenly made us care passionately about whether or not Yvonne McGregor would add a bronze to the Lancastrian's two-medal haul.

Suddenly the Dunc Gray Velodrome was taking on the status of a Wembley or a Lord's.

Meanwhile, Ian Peel had bagged his silver on the shooting range and you found yourself waking up to enquire whether our tri-athlete had justified his favouritism or the three-day eventers had pegged back the Australians.

Britain is back.

Oh, and when are the badminton mixed doubles semi-finals?

NEW column, new ideas. Well, almost. At risk of flogging the proverbial dead horse, why don't the Football League sort out their flagship cup competition?

Already viewed with disdain by the country's top clubs, the Worthington Cup hardly grabs the imagination of the fans in the early rounds. Credit to Blackburn Rovers for letting season-ticket holders in free and to Burnley for dropping their prices last night, but surely the cup would be more attractive to all if it was a straight one-off knockout.

Less fixture congestion and more excitement. And didn't Northampton deserve their place in round two for beating Fulham 1-0 in their first leg, only to get thumped in the return?

SPEAKING of the Worthington Cup, it was fun and games yesterday trying to ascertain whether Paul Kitson would be given the all-clear to play for Crystal Palace at Turf Moor.

A Palace press officer thought it likely that Kitson would play but his counterpart at Upton Park held the alternative view. With both sides travelling north no-one could obtain a definitive answer but a quick flash-back to last season suggested a no-show for Kitson.

Remember a striker named Emmanuel Omoyinmi, whose earlier appearance for Gillingham ultimately cost the Hammers a semi-final place ?

The phrase once bitten, twice shy comes to mind.

AMONG the end-of-season cricket plaudits for the likes of Bacup and Ribblesdale Wanderers, one slipped through net.

Whalley's former East Lancashire batsman David Pearson ended his Minor Counties career with a century for Cumberland in their championship final against Dorset.

Pearson's first innings century wasn't enough to stave off defeat but was the ultimate example of going out on a high.