Here in France, we have been watching the Rio 2016 Olympics on the British Broadcasting Company. The BBC, that is. Or the Beeb, as some call it.

We were pleased that the television system at the three-unit building we live in, here in semi-rural France, has a smattering of British TV — led by the BBC, which is a primary news site and also has some attractive entertainment options.

If we did not have access to the BBC, we would be struggling to grasp the Olympics in French, which is a bit more ambitious (French sports terms, that is) than we are keen to take on.

We have been able to see nearly every minute of Opening Ceremonies, the gymnastics coverage and, if we stay up late enough (like, 3 a.m.), we could see the whole of the swimming, too.

The fly in the ointment?

The unabashed “homerism” of BBC’s television correspondents.

If we had a pound sterling for every time a BBC announcer has shouted “Go, Becca!” or something similar … we could spend a weekend in London.

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Gabby Douglas of the U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team found herself in a spot of bother when some viewers did not like her attitude (as in, posture) on the victory stand during the playing of the national anthem at Rio 2016.

This was after the Americans won the women’s team gold medal on Tuesday night.

Four members of the five-woman team put right hands over hearts during the Star-Spangled Banner.

The fifth was Douglas, whose arms remained at her sides.

Let’s figure out if she was out of line … or not.

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More than a decade ago, in an attempt to make myself — and perhaps some readers — feel better as Barry Bonds slugged his way into the record books, I suggested that a certain third baseman for the New York Yankees, Alex Rodriguez, would deliver us from evil in a decade or so.

I suggested he was hitting home runs with enough frequency that he would pass Barry Bonds and recapture the career homer title for a drug-free player — like Henry Aaron and Babe Ruth, who held the “most homers” title before the cartoonishly puffed-up, late-career Bonds came along.

But that was based on two faulty assumptions: That, 1) Rodriguez would, like Bonds, continue to hit 30-plus home runs a season nonstop into his 40s and 2) that he was “clean” — not an abuser of performance-enhancing substances.

Neither of those assumptions proved accurate.

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Nature or nurture?

How important is the body you were born with, when it comes to sports excellence? Is it crucial? Or is it just one factor in a big bag of factors?

The successes at the Rio 2016 Olympics tonight of American gymnast Simone Biles and American swimmer Michael Phelps, each of whom reinforced their ranking among the greatest their sport has seen, has reopened the debate about how important body shape is. That is, nature.

As opposed to training and coaching. Which is nurture.

For one of these athletes, the conversation about “the perfect body” has been going on for a decade.

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Newspapers have been in decline for more than a decade now and that is bad news for good government and a free flow of information to regular people.

Not that everyone is clear on this.

John Oliver addressed the topic on Sunday in his HBO show Last Week Tonight.

It is funny (in Oliver’s hands) as well as sad and frightening, but anyone who is concerned about Where News Comes From should follow the link and watch the 20-minute video.

It will cost you nothing — which is what you expect from the internet, a selfish attitude most of us long ago thoughtlessly embraced. Without pausing to consider how your online news sources get the information they are passing on or spinning to their own advantage.

Oliver makes clear the crucial link between newspaper reporting, even as tens of thousands of newspaper journalists have been forced out of the business, and the rest of the “news world” — including a 20-second segment which demonstrates how heavily TV news leans on newspapers to tell them what is happening.

Said Oliver: “It’s pretty obvious — without newspapers to cite, TV news would just be Wolf Blitzer endlessly batting a ball of yarn around.”

Go watch the video now — here it is again — and then come back.

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I love this story. Or collection of stories.

It is about swimmers who have served bans for illicit performance-enhancing substances … being called out by their peers at Rio 2016. While the world watches.

An Australian has generated the most heat by calling Chinese swim hero Sun Yang a drug cheat — to his face — at a post-race press conference. This, after Mack Horton refused to shake Sun’s hand after winning the 400-meter freestyle final.

Which has led to a storm of criticism from China, much of it from people essentially saying to Horton, “How dare you?!?”

Horton, and others clean swimmers (or we prefer to think they are, having not yet failed a test), seem to be saying they no longer will grin and bear it when competing with athletes with a drug ban in their past.

This is important — athletes giving voice to issues they once suffered through in silence.

To wit: Drug cheats winning medals they did not deserve, the bane of international sports for at least 50 years now.

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Anyone who has attended a football game at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum knows you might face a long, steep climb to get to where you want to be.

It could be a metaphor for the former St. Louis (and Cleveland) Rams’ return to Los Angeles.

Making the decision to return to the stadium where they played for 34 seasons was the easy part.

Reconnecting with their fans will be a much tougher uphill battle.

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I suppose everyone in the States who cares about such things saw the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremonies via tape delay tonight.

It appears to have been the usual four hours of mind-numbing singing and dancing and people whirling in bright colors, including two hours of the Parade of Nations (anyone else old enough to remember when this was a dignified exercise and not some jostling selfie-fest goof?) … and well, here is a British sports writer doing a nice job describing what went on.

I attempted to watch the ceremonies live, starting at 1 a.m. in France, but I passed out just before it started and by the time I came around, that weasel IOC president Thomas Bach — does he remind anyone else of Sepp Blatter? — was giving a speech no one cared about, and the ceremonies were nearly over.

However, I had tuned in early enough to see the end of the Olympic torch relay, and the lighting of the cauldron by someone other than Brazil’s most famous athlete — and perhaps most famous person.

Which would be Edson Arantes do Nascimento — that is, the soccer great Pele. Who pretty much had to light the cauldron for Brazil’s Games, didn’t he? But who told organizers he was not available just a few hours before the Opening began.

And the explanation?

Pele, 75, said (apparently through his agent) that he was not up to traveling to the Maracana Stadium to touch the Olympic flame to the cauldron.

Which leaves me thinking we do not yet have all the facts to this story — which may be as interesting as the rest of the ceremonies.

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Maybe things are different, back in the States, where NBC must be promoting the Rio Olympics like crazy and Comcast is offering a plan to make another 11 channels of Summer Games available.

Maybe you are sick to death of all the promos, you’ve seen so many. Maybe you have heard all you need to hear, ahead of the Games, and know what you are going to watch from Rio, beginning with Opening Ceremonies tomorrow.

But my sense, from following several major media sources, is that these may be the least anticipated Summer Games in a long time. Maybe since Melbourne 1956 — which were just kind of off the grid.

Quick! Name your five favorite American athletes who will compete in Rio!

Now name one non-American in Rio who isn’t Usain Bolt!

Can you do it?

My ideas on why this Olympics is sorta sneaking up on us.

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Rio 2016 is the first Summer Olympics I will not attend since Moscow 1980.

Yes, it was a good run.

I made it to eight consecutive Summer Games. Beginning with Los Angeles 1984 and continuing with Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012. The first four with Gannett News Service; the next two with L.A. News Group; Beijing as a freelancer; London for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi.

I do not feel badly about not being in Brazil this month. It’s part of the notion of “retirement” … and freeing up an “E” credential for some  enthusiastic kid to get his or her turn.

For many journalists, an Olympics is a career goal. It was for me.

But after you do a few of them, some of the romance is lost and it is not uncommon for veterans of the event to think of it as two-and-a-half-week grinds involving a new set of arenas and stadiums but the same old media buses, security checks, hard deadlines, long days and no clear sense of “place”.

(Not like at a World Cup, where you can’t cover three events in one madcap day and, meantime, you get some notion of the country you are in, and a restaurant meal or two.)

Veteran Olympics reporters speak of the “post-Olympics crash” — when the body punishes the mind for going all-out for 16-plus days. Most journalists arrive at an Olympics peppy and enthusiastic and hold on to some of that. But many then fall ill within minutes of the Olympic flame being snuffed.

So, a quick look back at the previous eight … a sort of psychological experiment — word association — to see when I come up with when I say, for example …

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