Thursday, February 25, 2010

Lord of the Rings

I’m writing this from an unusual location, at least for me: in front of the television. I really don’t have time for a lot of television, but for the last week and a half I’ve been sitting on the couch, glued to the tube. I’ve been putting off studying and chores and just about everything else more productive than television, and for good reason.

The Olympics are on.

I must admit, I love the Olympics. I love the pageantry. I love the competition. I love the playing of national anthems when they hand out the medals. I think the greatest thrill in the world would be to be in the Olympics and take part in the Opening Ceremonies. I think the absolute worst thing in the world would be to be in the Olympics and finish fourth.

Right now ski jumping is on. On any given day, I couldn’t give a hoot about ski jumping, but for some reason when it’s the Olympics I find myself mesmerized by crazy people jumping off a big hill. The same with biathlon, speed skating and even something called Nordic combined, whatever that is. (I may draw the line at curling. It’s shuffleboard on ice. I can’t figure out why is this a sport?) And I’m on the edge of the couch when the speed and insanity sports come on. Luge, bobsled, downhill skiing. I’m fascinated by them all. There’s something about living on the edge that I can't get enough of. And I love the new sports they’ve added to the Olympics: halfpipe, snowboard cross, short track speed skating. What were once X Games are now some of the most exciting parts of the Olympic Games.

I must admit that I’m also taken in a little by the nationalism of it all—performing for your country and not because you signed a multimillion dollar contract and are getting paid to be there. Yes, yes, I fully understand that the whole thing has become overly commercialized and politicized. The innocence that the Olympics once had has long been lost, if it ever really existed at all. There will never be another Miracle on Ice, because the miracle of it all was the players on the U.S. men’s hockey team were innocent college kids taking on a Soviet machine that hid its professionalism behind a façade of amateurism.

In some ways, that’s OK. Now you truly have the best athletes in the world competing against each other. The National Hockey League even puts its season on hold so its players can scatter around the globe, return to their home countries and perform in the Olympics.

But it seems to me what makes the Olympics so compelling is not so much the sports as it is the athletes behind them. I’m particularly drawn to the athletes in the lesser-known sports because they practice just as hard and just as often as the better-known athletes, but they do it out of the spotlight and away from the endorsements. There are endless stories about people who live on the edge of poverty so they can compete. They spend four years living for this one moment. And there are stories like the figure skater who performed two days after her mother died. That’s what the Olympics are about. That’s what the Olympics do—they bring out that kind of will in people. And they keep me glued to the tube for 16 days.