I SHALL be buying my Great Britain Olympic sports shirts next week – when the games are over and the prices come tumbling in the shops.

Let me hasten to add that they will not be for me but for relatives in America, where the incongruity of wearing sporting gear when they are too old or too overweight to take part in anything other than competitive eating, passes them by.

It's one thing for sporting heroes to wear Lycra and quite another for ordinary folk to emulate them.

I mean, we were talking in the pub about Olympic memories and I said mine was undoubtedly Victoria Pendleton.

“Did you watch her race?”

“Oh, did she race as well?”

Athletes have amazing fitness, steely determination and toned bodies. Many, like Victoria and Jessica Ennis, are also quite stunning. It hardly seems fair. On them, sportswear looks brilliant. On the rest of us, it can look a joke.

Us ordinary Brits, of course, also stretch the concept that links sport and leisurewear, although it is the Yanks who are gold medal class in obesity. For instance, I have a pair of tracksuit bottoms that have never seen a track in their life and I wear training shoes that would die of shame in the company of a Holmfirth Harrier.

You only have to walk along Huddersfield High Street to see that tracksuits are often de rigeur for many men and women about town, even though their body shapes would suggest that sporting prowess may be a dim and distant memory. And done by somebody else.

But let's face it. A tracksuit is supremely comfortable. This is because it sags in exactly the same places as its wearer. It can also conceal signs of excessive droop.

“It's the way it fits. It's baggy at the front.”

Chaps who buy football shirts should bear this in mind. They too often buy a 38 inch chest, because that has always been their size, without taking into account that it is now supported by a 44 inch belly. This is why, when they stand at a bar, they often appear to have a small bouncy castle hidden beneath their shirt.

The advice is always buy big and let it hang. I do.

I must confess I possess a Manchester United shirt, but only wear it inside the privacy of my own home. On my frequent trips to Ireland, I have also acquired a Gaelic football shirt for County Galway, from whence my forebears hail. But generally, I avoid sporting apparel on grounds of age, even though I am a believer in the maxim that the older I get, the better I was.

“Me? I could have been a contender.”

“You could have been a contender at what? Tiddlywinks?”

Actually, I found tiddlywinks too hard on the cuticles. I much preferred football: boots on your feet, people to kick, tribal ethos, and the Sunday morning exhilaration of realising there really was life after death as the hangover cleared in the rain of Leeds Road playing fields.

Lord Coe, of course, hopes the Olympic Games will inspire the populace to take up sport. I, for one, would happily become a cyclist and follow in the tracks of Victoria Pendleton. As I've hinted, I'd follow her anywhere. Despite the restraining order. But I don't think that it will happen.

My mate Brian said: “Somebody asked me if I was going to the gym. I mean, how stupid. I don't know any Jim. But I have enjoyed the Olympics. I'm off now for another afternoon of sport at the pub. A game of pool, a few pints and athletics on the telly.”

Shirts will be worn, but in tribute rather than inspiration to greater fitness. I have a feeling the real lasting legacy will be half price sportswear next week.