OK, I was trying to do something else and tried to login to Google and wondered why I had a gmail account. Then I saw this link. OH, yeah.
I love the Olympics.
I love the scandals (underage gymnasts! overdoped cyclists!)
I love the sports you never see during the year--at least, you don't see them now that ESPN has baseball and Wide World of Sports is off the air.
I have had only one "Olympic Moment" so far, and that was the predictable "US Swim Team Relay comes from behind to win!" I am a little annoyed that experienced sports guys are talking about it like they are idiots. Chris Collinsworth was on last night comparing the other guys to the Packers and Phelps to Favre, saying the other guys were (in essence) jealous and annoyed with Phelps because they said they hadn't been thinking of his 8 medals, they had been focused on winning their one medal. I guess my advantage is that I have never done anything ever so I KNOW that I don't know what they are feeling, so I listen to what they tell me and base my opinions on that, not how I might have felt when Kenny Anderson was a bigger star than I.
I do get a bit tired of hearing about Phelps, but I guess they figure you need someone to root for or you won't tune in tomorrow. But the thing is that every person who is at those games is living a dream, fulfilling a long and grueling quest (sometimes it was just the quest for citizenship, like in the case of the Georgian Women's Beach Volleyball team, but it was effort nonetheless). Each person is enough of a story--and once they get past the stridency of Misty May and Phelps and all, to their credit, they do often communicate those stories.
oops... running out of time...
1 comment:
I'm always sort of ambivalent toward the Olympics. I think what I like most about it is the chance to see sports and competitions I don't usually pay attention to, and know that they're the best in the world. The Stories of Hardship and Triumph are occasionally stirring, but I also know that everyone in the Olympics has a story like that. You can't train for your entire life to compete in one event and not have a story like that. So they get a little numbing after a while.
And honestly, I'm becoming sort of pro-doping. They're competing for my entertainment, right? So why not do whatever it takes to make the best competition possible?
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