In the Winter of 2002, I was recovering from a serious car accident and couldn’t even read due to massive headaches (it hurt too much to concentrate on the words). Thankfully, I had the Salt Lake City games to keep me company. I watched all day every day and for the most part loved every moment. That silly figure skating medal controversy was just too much for me.
There are so many things I love about the Olympics. I love the years of dedication and effort the athletes put in towards sports that for the most part will never make them any money and how they do it for some ideal “greater glory.” I love the pagentry of the opening ceremonies, specifically when all the teams enter the stadium – I just love flags. I love how nations that shouldn’t get along somehow do. At the end of the day, we are all humans. We were only born into our countries/states/cities. I didn’t ask to be an American. Someone in China didn’t ask to be Chinese. It just happened to work out that way when we were born. Sports is truly a global language – hell, North and South Korea are marching together in the opening ceremonies and those nations are still technically at war (a cease-fire was signed on July 27, 1953 but the war has not ended officially).
Specifically for the Winter Games, I love the obscure sports, like curling and the Biathalon, the later being where you cross-country ski as fast as you can for a few kilometers, then take a rifle off your back to shoot at some targets and repeat 5-10 times. Its what I imagine Nordic special forces to be. I’m not a huge fan of ice skating and ice dancing but I love when the Americans win, especially girls from Long Island. So, it is already understood that NBC owns my TV for 2 weeks and that NOTHING else will be watched starting on 2/10.
Torino/Turin is the now. For the future, Vancouver has got the games in 2010 which is pretty cool as I loved Calgary in 1988 (go Saddledome). The contenders for the 2014 Winter Oympics are [in alphabetical by city order]: Almaty, Kazakhstan, Borjomi, Georgia, Jaca, Spain, Pyeongchang, South Korea, Salzburg, Austria, Sochi, Russia and Sofia, Bulgaria . I for one am routing for Kazakhstan, if only because maybe then in a spirit of Olympic goodwill Borat’s web site will be once again live.