Column: 2010 Olympics provide plenty of entertainment
Published Feb. 19, 2010
I generally consider myself a pretty easy-to-please sports fan. The athletic event doesn't have to be terribly creative to capture my attention; it just has to be present. I don't really want to go as far as to say I would watch pretty much any sport, but I will watch pretty much any sport. Not just because the alternative is usually homework, though that is a big part, but also because I find it absolutely fascinating how many different variations of athletic events there can be — one of the many reasons the Winter Olympics are right up my alley.
The mere concepts of the many disciplines, such as the biathlon and curling, just blow my mind. The Summer Olympics have their fair share of events foreign to me but not to the extent of the Winter Olympics. A large part of this is probably because I grew up in a southern place where the rare occurrence of a snowflake causes the schools to close for months and the city to shut down. But the philosophy behind many of the unique winter sports couldn't have been duplicated in the summer under any stretch of the imagination.
Perhaps another reason why the winter games seem like such a novel idea to me is because the last time they rolled around, I didn't have my driver's license yet.
One of the reasons why the World Cup is such a crazy party is because it only drops by once every four years. The pressure to perform well is through the roof because next time the event occurs, the circumstances will be completely different.
The same philosophy underlies the Olympics. There are the occasional Brett Favre-like ageless wonders who seem to have competed in every Olympics since the dawn of man, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Factoring in age and the danger of many of the winter sports, this will be many of the competitors' sole shot, and they know by now to make the most of it.
The thing I find most remarkable about the Olympic Games is just how much of a unifying factor sports can be. For two weeks, the world seems to drop what it's doing and watch, enthralled, as we compete against each other in various athletic events.
War could last for the rest of time but it seems like, for this short period of time, we are all on the same team, competing for fun among ourselves. Hearing about how highly these athletes are regarded in their native countries and the individual joy they seem to bring substantiates the notion of how important sports are. Gold medal winner or not, the vast amount of hard work, dedication and time it takes to be able to compete at the highest level of any sport is substantial, and these athletes deserve our attention.
Maybe if I had grown up someplace where dropping below 40 degrees wasn't an anomaly, things might be different. Perhaps winter sports would be so commonplace and boring to me that I would be forced to find other ways to procrastinate. Luckily, things turned out the way they did, and women's hockey will work just fine for now.