And so it goes. . . the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino are history. (NBC is showing the closing ceremonies on tape delay, as if it mattered.) The closing ceremonies included all those cheesy Italianesque songs from the fifties made infamous by Dean Martin ("That's Amore") and Rosemary Clooney ("Mambo Italiano"), and included a marching band of clowns playing the Village People's "YMCA" (I suddenly miss Kiss from the Salt Lake City Games!). Andrea Bocelli (representing the host country) and Avril Lavigne (representing Canada, which will be the site of the next Winter Olympiad) performed, which makes sense, as did Ricky Martin, which doesn't. (When's the last time it snowed in Puerto Rico?)
But I loved the little Fiat 500 that putt-putted into the stadium. :-)
While the television ratings improved for NBC over time somewhat, these Games still ended up being the lowest-rated Olympics ever in America, for various reasons (*cough cough*, Bode Miller, *cough cough*). Because so few star athletes left much of an impression for the U.S., many observers have been led to believe that the Games are something of a disappointment for the Americans, when in fact the U.S. team won 25 medals, second only to Germany's 29, and won nearly twice as many medals as their highest medal count at a winter Olympiad not held on American soil . . . er, snow.
I've made fun of the Games, winter and summer, on this here blog, but all in good fun, of course. Maybe it's the fact that some events in Torino (and in Athens two years ago) still had tickets for events literally up to the last minute, which means that tickets at events for future Olympiads might actually be dirt cheap, but I've always thought it would be fun to go to the Olympics and see the competition in person. . . and to go to all the celebrations in between.
I've always loved parties. :-)
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