I love the Olympics.
I’m just gonna throw that out there. Those of you who don’t like obscure sports and names like Oystein Slettemark (Denmark), need not read further.
Every two years I get geeked out with trivia of nations that usually never pass my consciousness. Andorra? It’s a small country landlocked by France and Spain in the Pyrenees Mountains. It’s the sixth-smallest country in Europe, and Andorra la Vella — the capital — is the highest capital city in Europe. The country even has six athletes representing the blue, yellow and red. Interesting stuff.
Basically, the Olympics (winter or summer) are an excuse for me to watch a lot of television for two weeks. The beauty of the games are that they get you cheering for teams and sports that otherwise you would never care about. Just last night I was watching the Nordic combined team relay. Austria won the race by a couple of seconds over the United States, but the last mile or so I was glued to the television, hoping the Americans would pull it out. It wasn’t meant to be, but the silver medal was still the U.S. team’s first ever medal in Nordic.
For me, if the person is representing the United States, I’ll cheer for them because I have never heard of them personally. That’s the great thing about the Olympics. You start cheering for countries.
The other obligatory sport that always draws me in is curling. Without fail, I will come across two random teams playing on CNBC or MSNBC and watch for hours. I won’t understand 80 percent of the terms used to describe the action, but the way the person intently focuses when releasing the rock down the ice, then glides along with it for a while is mesmerizing. Then the sweepers can actually curl the rock by sweeping the ice in front of it. Very simple game that involves a lot of finesse, but still cool. Although I would doubt the actual members of the curling team’s statuses as “athletes.” Most of the team were just normal Joes, with slight paunches and rounded features. I would say curling is one of those, “is it a sport or game” events, and it really depends on how you define sports.
This year’s winter Olympics in Vancouver B.C. have been really interesting to me personally because it’s so close to home. I debated about going, but alas, school and work stopped me. I’ve been to that part of Canada, and it’s a beautiful area. I see a lot of the Northwest depicted in Vancouver. It’s cool to see that the sporting world’s focus is on our little chunk of the globe, and other people get to see how nice it is.
There have been some big headlines for the Americans, from Lindsey Vonn winning a gold medal, to Bode Miller getting three in skiing after his epic fail at the Turin games for years ago. Even U.S. figure skater Evan Lysacek won a gold to grab some headlines. There are so many feel good stories in the Olympics that some people get overloaded, but for every sport there are comebacks, upsets, dynasties and underdogs. It’s like having the championships for MLB, the NBA, the NFL, the NHL, and every other professional sport, and putting them all within a two week span. Every day you see the best athletes in the world go head to head for the championship.
I personally like the summer Olympics better because there more sports to watch, but there are still enough during the winter Olympics for me to get my fix. To me, it’s more about the competition anyway, no matter the sport. The Olympic games are the epitome of our sporting culture and I can’t wait for the summer games in London in 2012. Anyone else excited for some table tennis?
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