My Olympia

Every four years, during the Olympics, I find myself almost caring about sports.   (It’s not that I’m too good to be a sports fan or anything, I just don’t have a lot of time to be a fan of anything but good writing.)

But now, as the great thundering $15 billion spectacle staggers towards its end, I’m experiencing Olympic fatigue.  I’m just not used to spending that many hours in front of the television.  Especially since I’m not spending the whole time drinking beer.  So I’ve worked out ways of skipping to the finale.

For instance, many sports seem to be decided in the final moments, if not seconds.  There’s no point in watching anything but the last minute of a water polo match.  Either it’s decided in the last minute, or it goes into overtime, or it’s a total blowout so there’s no point in watching it anyway.  Ditto soccer/football.  Ditto basketball.

Ditto any long-distance race: 1500 meters, 800 meters, 5000 meters, 10,000 meters, or the marathon.  Skip to the last lap.  Nothing happens before that.

Even the women’s swimming marathon, which lasted a couple hours, came down to a sprint over the last 50 meters.

Contrariwise, most rowing contests are decided in the first few seconds.  Whoever jumps into the lead right at the start generally holds the lead right to the end. Everything after the first ten seconds is boring, so jump to the next event.

You can save yourself a lot of time if you follow these simple rules.

Where are my martial arts?  I’ve seen a little wrestling, but I can’t seem to find boxing, taekwondo, or fencing on any of the half-dozen channels carrying the Olympics.  They don’t even seem to cover the modern pentathlon, which demonstrates antique military skills like shooting, fencing, and riding.

I understand why you don’t see contact sports in prime time.  It’s because NBC thinks that women won’t watch people hit each other, and will change the channel.  (In my Kenpo training I’ve been kicked by enough women to cause me to doubt this presumption, but I’m sure NBC has its polls an’ stuff, and I don’t.)  But not covering the noble art of self-defense at all?  I’m sore annoyed.

So what does NBC show us instead of people hammering each other into lumps of undifferentiated protein?  What the Peacock Network considers girlie sports, like gymnastics.

But I’m starting to think that women’s gymnastics verges on child abuse.  Most of these girls suffer such a beating during training and competition that they’ll never see a second Olympics.  Their muscular and skeletal systems aren’t mature enough to take the pounding.

Boxing is unacceptably violent, but watching driven, talented teenagers turned into arthritic old ladies is true family entertainment, beloved by all.

And where is my damn yachting?  I haven’t seen a single frame of yachting.  I bet most of you don’t even know that there are fourteen whole days of sailing events at the Olympics, and that’s because it’s just not carried on television.  Curse you, NBC!

And here’s something else I bet you didn’t know.  The Olympics used to award medals for painting, architecture, sculpture, and literature.  At the 1928 games, they even gave an award for epic poetry!  (There were still epic poets then, because after 1919 there were all these new countries that needed national epics.  Though sometimes there was a degree of confusion: the Polish national epic, Pan Tadeusz, not only borrows the plot of Romeo and Juliet but is set in Lithuania, and begins with the line, “O Lithuania, my Fatherland!”  But I digress.)

The Olympics stopped being about culture in 1948, and they went so far as to un-award all 151 culture medals, and strike them from the lists, so that you won’t even find them on the Olympic site.   Even though the records for silly sports like tug-of-war and solo synchronized swimming still stand.

But wouldn’t you like to see culture back at the Olympics?  I’d adore seeing International Poetry Slam.  (I’m from New Mexico, where poetry slams were  invented, so we’d have an advantage, naturally.)  I’d love to see Olympic judges ruling on whether elephant excrement is a suitable artistic medium.  And I’d adore hearing the national epics!  We have so many more countries now.

Poets of Sealand, stand forth!