I still can’t get used to the security reality that dictates, and understandably so, surface-to-air missiles atop certain London apartment houses.
I get as nationalistic as the next guy when the Olympics come around. I especially like the events that Americans are good at, such as track and field, swimming and diving and gymnastics. I like those up-close-and-personal features of U.S. athletes with compelling back stories.
*Having said that, some Olympic sports I just don’t get, even if the U.S. does well in them. Equestrian, for example. Still seems like a sop to the elites. You don’t really have to be an athlete. One participant, a Japanese rider, is 71. Seventy-one! But more to the point, shouldn’t the horses get medals too? They do all the hard work.
*Glad to see IOC President Jacques Roge rule out Formula One as an Olympic sport. Something about competitive engines being incompatible with the raison d’être of the Olympic Games.
*Unless you’re a closet Esther Williams aqua musical fan, who really watches synchronized swimming, at least for all the right reasons?
*There’s volleyball, and there’s gymnastics. The best compete. How fortunate that less-than-the-best have their own, somewhat redundant, consolation-prize versions: beach volleyball and rhythmic gymnastics.
*Trampoline. Isn’t that practice apparatus for gymnasts? Like blocking sleds are to football players? Now it’s an event?
*Judo and Taekwondo. Choose one.
*Because nothing is quite like an Olympic sport, shouldn’t the quadrennial Games be a given sport’s ultimate arena of prestige? As a result, soccer, basketball and tennis shouldn’t be part of it. That’s because nothing tops the World Cup, the NBA Championship and Wimbledon. The Olympics shouldn’t be a diluted, anti-climatic version of anything.
*Perhaps a fourth medal–say, platinum–should be awarded in certain sports. Seems a bit too egalitarian to award similar gold medals to, say, the athlete who wins the 100-meter dash or gymnastics’ all-around or badminton’s singles or is a member of team handball.
*Some sports are better in the equal-opportunity, gender-equity abstract. Women’s weightlifting comes readily to mind.
*But no softball?
Actually, I wasn’t totally serious about all of the above. Whether it’s badminton, archery–or curling in the Winter Games–there is something refreshing in seeing real amateurs–who can’t make a living, let alone a marketing coup from their sport–competing for the sheer love of it on the world’s biggest stage for their sport. That’s the Olympic spirit. That’s a real dream-team scenario.