Thoughts on the Olympics . . .
- Thanks for a friend’s login, I had access to nbcolympics.com, and I thought the coverage was stellar.
- I am thoroughly distressed by the Valieva disaster. I haven’t followed figure skating in years, and I guess I’ll go back to ignoring it. Also, I feel like every time I get excited about an athlete or story, it turns out to not be real. See: Lance Armstrong. Valieva is apparently on three heart medications (two legal), and I just find this really sad and disturbing.
- Though, really, Russian figure skaters on drugs is not as scary and sad as Russians invading Ukraine.
- I haven’t watched alpine skiing in years, and I loved watching it during the Olympics. Especially the downhill and super-G.
- I hate that there is so much emphasis on the Olympics in some sports. No person’s life should be defined by how they perform on one day every four years. I love that skiing, for example, has other pinnacles of achievement, and honestly don’t think Shiffrin’s failure to perform, for example, at Beijing is all that meaningful. She has had many other successes in her career.
- I think programs to increase participation by athletes from countries without snow are silly. Very silly. It would be far more worthwhile to try and increase participation among poorer people and countries that DO have snow, like lower income communities in the US and Canada, and poorer cold countries like Kazakhstan and maybe the southern extremes of South America and Africa. Who cares if people from Tonga or Jamaica participate in the winter Olympics?
- Some Olympic sports are seriously lame and boring. Curling. Nordic combined. The sliding sports.
- Women should be allowed to do quads in the short program of figure skating.
- I enjoyed watching biathlon. Though cross country skiing is one of the most PED-rife sports around.
- The difference between men and women in some sports, like the half pipe, is huge and striking. It’s much, much smaller in others like figure skating. To me, this points to the fact that cultural factors are huge in achievement in sport.
- Being in Beijing right now as a foreigner seems like a nightmare. I particularly feel for the athletes who were disappointed in their performance. Really, almost any cold place in the world would have been a better choice than Beijing.
- I am sad they are just about over.
And yes, my recent interest in skiing is not exactly a coincidence.