Over the past two weeks, I have watched the Winter Olympic games. I have mostly had it on in the background while I am doing other things. The Olympic games are unique and the competition usually involves people we never hear of until the games.
I have some thoughts about these Olympics:
- They like to tell us that these athletes are the “best in the world”. I’m not so sure about that. In reality these are the ones would could afford to train and compete. For instance, for someone to train as an Olympic figure skater, it costs between $50,000-$100,000 or more. It isn’t cheap and not something everyone can afford to do. So there could be better athletes out there but just simply don’t have to money to compete.
- What’s up with this sport of curling? It seems every time I turn on the games that there are people screaming and sweeping. Have you tried to sit and watch an ENTIRE game? Painful.
- The television coverage of the games is a bit frustrating. I have tuned in to watch figure skating and suddenly I’ve been bounced to watch skeleton or double-person luge. With all the streaming options, you’d think we could just watch the live coverage of the sport we want to watch.
- Speaking of television coverage, the reporter interviews have been horrible. Last night one of the reporters interviewed a skater who was just devastated with her performance. The reporter asked, “How did you feel when you came off the ice?” How do you think she felt? What a terrible question. Just make her relive it again and cry about it. Good grief.
- How about some of these sports? Can you really bounce down to your local ski lodge and decide you want to do some sloping? Yeah, I doubt there is a place to do all those turns, flips and acrobatics.
- Every four years we get reacquainted with terms that we don’t normally use any other time such as “twizzles” and “Salchow”. Last night I heard some new terms such as bread and butter at one of the ski jumping events. I’m still not sure what they mean by “butter”.
It is also difficult to see how much pressure these athletes are under - especially when they are “expected” to get a Gold Medal. Several have caved in under the pressure. It is sad to see how crushed these young athletes are after a terrible performance. They have given up so much of their lives for this one moment at such a young age.
Some of my favorite sports to watch are: figure skating, bobsled, short-track speed skating and ice hockey.
