5 on Friday: Why I Love the Olympics
Photo Credit: Southeastern Star
I love the Olympics. I don’t care if it’s the winter or summer games, I just want to watch (although I do have a preference for the winter Olympics, because skate sports). Unfortunately, this year the Olympics have been marred by horrible conditions at hotels, dangerous courses, and the fate of the poor stray dogs wandering around Sochi. There is still something magical about the Olympics. These are some of the reasons I love watching.
- Non-Mainstream Sports – The Olympics may feature traditional sports, but often these are not mainstream sports. Sure there are exceptions, like hockey in the winter and basketball in the summer, but mostly these are sports that aren’t on TV every week. It’s a chance to be exposed to sports we may not otherwise see.
- Athletes Minus the Attitude – One of the reasons I don’t like a lot of mainstream sports is the ridiculous attitude that sports stars in the US tend to have. Like the world owes them for being able to play so well. I don’t see that in the Olympics. Maybe it’s because we don’t see these athletes on TV everyday so we don’t see them doing these things, but I like to believe it’s because they’re humbled by playing on the world stage.
- Gender Seems Less of an Issue – As men and women from around the world compete at the Olympic level, their gender seems less of an issue. They are just athletes. In reality I know it’s because these aren’t sports we watch every day. But I like to believe it’s because at this level sport is sport.
- The Athlete’s Story – I love watching the athlete’s stories during the Olympics. I like knowing how they got here. Not every athlete gets a piece, but when they do I love watching them. The games become much more interesting to me when I know the people playing.
- Something to Cheer For – There’s not much we can gather around and cheer for anymore. There’s not much that unites us. But watching the top athletes from our country compete for gold is something we can all get behind.
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Nicole is a Software Quality Engineer, music collector, and chronic project starter. In her free time she enjoys reading trashy romance novels, catching up on her game backlog, and bourbon.
View all posts by: Nicole2 Responses to “5 on Friday: Why I Love the Olympics”
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I agree with you on #’s 1, 2, 3 and 5 100%. It would be impossible for me to care less about #4. I’d rather have every round of Finnish Cranial Icebreaking shown than watch one more “Oh, this athlete has been injured by rabid fennec foxes, eats only hyper-organic vegetables and would have donated her kidney to her younger brother, who only had one and it was failing, but she wanted to win.”
That said, the only winter Olympic events I’ll be watching are Curling, because I have money on it and, because, as the office-pool organizer said, “[It’s] the only legitimate sport in the winter games where you could literally compete with a beer in your hand,” and Biathlon…because those are some badasses. Cross country ski, then drop down, reduce your heart rate, and take out targets the size of quarters, wash rinse repeat? Why is there any other kind of skiing?
Rabid fennec foxes would be the cutest rabid animal ever.
And you have to watch speed skating, because it’s speed skating!