Being an utterly unathletic person who abhors watching sports, why do I absolutely love the Olympics? Why have I spent countless hours avidly watching every single Olympics since the tragic 1972 Munich games that are the strongest memory of my 14th summer?
Well, first of all, the Olympics are insanely dramatic. People train their entire lives just for a chance to compete in them. If you have a bad day – or a bad hour or a bad minute – it’s at least four years before you can try again, or maybe you never will, depending on your condition and the competition when the time rolls around. There really is the famous “thrill of victory and agony of defeat” in a way no other competition comes even close to.
Second, coming into the Olympics, most of the competitors aren’t wealthy from their sport (some are in fact impoverished from pursuing it). They do it for the sheer achievement of stretching themselves to their limits and winning Olympic glory.
Lastly, most of the sports are individual events. I’m a diehard individualist, which is one reason I’m not interested in most professional sports. I actually don’t think most team sports should even be part of the Olympics – at least not sports that get plenty of attention and money otherwise (hockey, basketball, etc). The Olympics are at their best in shining a light on sports that normally get little or no attention. And once current professional team players were allowed to compete at the Olympics, pushing aside the top amateur players, team sports lost all meaning and poignance. (Imagine the famous "Miracle on Ice" with veteran NHL players. Ain't quite the same, is it?)
And now some random thoughts I’ve had watching the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which are heading to the finish line this week:
NBC stands for Nothing But Commercials. I’ve watched Olympics for nearly 40 years and I’ve never seen so many commercials breaking in so often. I swear it’s 50% commercials. CNBC is better – and they have curling! We’ve renamed them “Curling NBC.”
Curling is a corking good sport. We’ve been learning the rules as we watch, and the commentary really varied. It was all cryptic inside curling lingo unless the US was in the match, in which case the basics were repeatedly over-explained as in the annoying commentating for all the other sports. They know most Americans will only watch curling if their compatriots are in the game, but also that they’re clueless about the sport. After hearing the expert commentary (which had me going online to translate it), I felt incredibly talked down to during the US games.
Curling does have a real domestic flavor, what with all the talk of houses, “good curling maintenance,” brooms, hammers, correct weight, biters, as well as the cries of “harder!” Uh, well, I guess it depends on your domestic arrangements.
Sports that show the athletes’ bodies are much more exciting and impressive than sports where the bodies are subordinated to a piece of equipment like a sled. One looks like doing; the other like taking a ride.
For safety’s sake, they moved the men’s luge to begin at the women’s start line. But why did they move the women to the “junior” start? To save the men’s ego, that’s why.
Women's hockey included a Chinese player named Xu Ting. You can't make stuff like that up. Well, yes, you can…if you're in junior high school.
Snowboard cross is truly unpredictable, as the men's final proved. Seth Westcott Ohno’ed his way from the back to the gold.
Speaking of the slippery demon, Apolo Ohno really lucked out in the 1,500 when the South Koreans got into a Three Stooges fight for the gold and Larry and Curly knocked each other out.
Speed skating is impressive, but well, boring. The fact that it’s timed vs. head-to-head races is part of it, although ski racing has no such problem, so I think it’s the monotony of the motion that’s the real issue. I thought short track was insane when it first appeared in the Olympics but now I’m a convert. It’s incredibly dramatic and fun to watch.
If Shaun White isn’t endorsing hair care products of some kind, his agent is asleep. His hair has more corkscrews than his tricks. He's the Farrah Fawcett of our time.
I noticed Lindsey Vonn went very quickly from saying she was just happy to win one gold medal after being injured to being very disappointed she didn’t win another.
Bulletin: Ski racing has reached the absolute limit of what the human body can do. Watching some of the skiers in slo-mo, not falling down even after getting off balance and flying along on a single ski but instead recovering and not only finishing the race but doing well…it’s clear that it’s not possible to push it any further. Really.
Some macho sports fans claim figure skating isn’t a sport because the skaters wear silly costumes. Have you guys ever stepped back and taken a good long look at how football players are got up?
For some strange reason, most of the figure skaters have been using music from the three classical albums we had in my house growing up. Watching their routines, I sometimes feel like I’m in some kind of dream sequence from a movie about my life.
A Japanese figure skater did his short program to Jimi Hendrix. We need more of that.
I don’t care what the Kerrs say about not thinking of themselves “that way” when they’re skating; it’s a little icky when a pair is made up of a sister and brother.
It seems easier to psych yourself out in figure skating than any other Olympic sport. I think it's the time leading up to the jumps, which seems akin to preparing to jump off a cliff. Skiers and sliders don’t have the luxury of anticipatory anxiety once their runs are underway.
Scott Hamilton obviously still feels like he's out there on the ice. I love how he can't control his voice in both excitement and disappointment. It's endearing.
Thank god John Tesh isn't doing the Olympics anymore. He once ruined an entire Olympics for me. At every Olympics, the ex-athletes do much better than the so-called professional broadcasters in covering their respective sports. The skating commentary has been wonderfully restrained. They actually let the top ice dancers do their routines without saying a word to spoil the show.
First the Russians were whining about losing the men’s figure skating gold medal. Then the Germans were complaining that the Canadian curling fans were cheering their country’s team too loudly. What has happened to these countries? They’ve gone from tyrants to wimps. They need a good World War to get their mojo back.
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Comments
I'm loving the half pipe and the ski cross. Just some awesome performances. And it's gotta be the upper legs that keeps those speed skiers afoot - or aski - when they should be ass over teakettle. I've seen them pull it back together and I agree, it seems there can be no further improvement.
I'm taping like 9 hours a day of coverage, minimum, and trying to jump around and find what I want. I'm a fast-forward queen - Hate commercials! The only bad part is, I get sleepy.... damn those tape delays!
Mary, I've been staying up waaay too late watching it, esp since they of course save the really good stuff till the end. Good thing I work from home.
Connie, most of the athletes do things that astound me. The only sport I can even remotely imagine doing is the curling. And I don't underestimate that one, either!
Readwillet, I can understand not wanting to see more snow! Living where I do, I don't have to deal with that, so I just think it looks beautiful.
Kathy, I used to find speed skating exciting...I just don't any more (except for short track). It does help to have someone to root for, like back in the Eric Heiden and Bonnie Blair days. And there were also some Dutch skaters I used to root for.
Ann, did you catch Shaun White making faces behind the NBC interviewer after his gold medal win just before she interviewed him? It was hilarious and for some reason didn't seem disrespectful at all, just light and loose and natural as you say. The snowboarders make a nice relief from the canned controlled responses that almost all athletes give now.
Silkstone, if you haven't seen "Blades of Glory", I would recommend it, if only because it does the impossible - it answers the question of whether or not you can actually parody figure skating in the affirmative.
And yes, thank the gods above for the DVR.
Deborah, actually I always find they go on long enough that by the time they're done, I'm ready for them to end. I feel like I get my life back...or at least my evenings. It helps that they stagger Winter and Summer games now, so you only have to wait 2 years! That was a great step forward when they did that.
Jeanette, I tried to watch Blades of Glory one nite on TV and just couldn't get into it so gave up. I enjoy Will Ferrell in small doses, but not sure I like him for a full movie. I may try again, though, as I always thought I'd find it hilarious after following figure skating for so many years.
Lisa, I'm trying to imagine what the games look like on a phone screen!!
Hawley, Lea, and Browneyed, thanks!
Froggy, I was bummed I missed the biathlon. That is the strangest sport and a perfect example of the Olympics showcasing something events you'd never see otherwise! I also missed the 2 regular ski jumping which are among my favorites as well. I can go to the NBC site and catch up on what I missed, but it's not quite the same. (Even though we get tape delay here on the West Coast, I don't look at the results and so can feel like I'm seeing it in real time. Not the same when you see it on the web and already know the results....)
Hmmmmmmmm??
The USA plays today @2PM CST.
This AMERICAN will be watching and cheering for my country's team.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/23/SP6P1C5U5M.DTL
I agree with most of it. Especially the every four years part. For most it's a once in-a-lifetime chance. Age, injuries and economics see to that.
Curling? I tell my friends that it's not nearly as boring as they might think. This should be the sport's motto. But "corking" good? I hear that in Canada it requires plenty of uncorking to discern its finer qualities.
I do take great issue with your nostalgia for amateurs and individual sports. The whole amateur vision was based on class discrimination and hypocrisy. Those with better access to funding could devote themselves more to sports. Ice hockey was a prime example. For decades, the Soviets could send their national all-stars because they were mostly in the army and ergo not professionals. Canada and the USA had to eliminate their 1,000 best players because they were clearly professionals. So far as I know, the old Communist Bloc countries never had to eliminate anyone in any sport because of professionalism. Funding still makes a difference now but it doesn't impose the same sort of class discrimination it once did.
And as for your quirky preference for individual sports, who was just championing curling? Thanks for posting. I still think the system should find a way of making me pay for articles like this.
Can't see the furry feet with his skates on, but YES! =o)
I thought the Canadian pair's costumes were beautiful, too. I was genuinely happy that they won, although the silver medalists did awfully well, too.
The Russian pair should fire their costume makers the minute they get off the plane in Moscow. Except for the simple things they were in the compulsory dance, Their costumes were AWFUL! ( I though Belbin and Agosto deserved the Bronze, too. Maybe Putin threatened the judges....)
I guess what I'd like to see happen, and perhaps to some extent it does, is for pro athletes to show restraint and let their younger largely amateur counterparts be on these teams instead. And of course, they start as college players, so that should be their time to be on an Olympic team if they're good enough (and they should be if they're later good enough to turn pro). But it's a complicated issue and there's no way to slice and dice it, so we're stuck with some unfortunate consequences from what was otherwise an excellent rule change. (I vividly remember seeing a movie as a kid about the sad life of Jim Thorpe that fell apart over this very issue, so I was glad when it happened.)
As for curling...I make an exception to my team sports antipathy for that!
Shiral, the level of bad taste in ice skating costumes never fails to stagger me. I think it's entirely possible to be flashy and eye catching and not be vulgar -- the women's gold medal favorite, Yu Na Kim, had just such a costume in the short program and it was great. I have no idea why it's so rare that skaters find that balance. And it only seems to be getting worse, not better -- unlike the usual experience we have of seeing fashions from older decades and finding them silly or ugly, skating costumes from earlier decades often look a lot better!