The Olympics: My Greatest Hits, Part One

Although two weeks and several comments have passed since the Olympics ended, I thought I'd revisit the subject.  I actually wrote this and my next entry in advance and had planned to end my hiatus with this post today, but I started blogging earlier than expected about other, more relevant subjects.  So things worked out a bit differently . . ..

I was looking at my comments on past Olympiads, winter and regular, and I thought I'd quote some of them. These aren't my most read or most popular blog entries about the Olympics as measured by Blogger.com (some of them haven't even been read yet!), just some favorite Olympic observations of mine from Athens in 2004 to the Vancouver Winter Games in 2010. I've decided not to include excerpts of my commentary of the London Games because they were only recently completed, and besides, my witticisms about London have not stood the test of time. (As Sammy Hagar once sang while fronting Van Halen, "Only time will tell if we stand the test of time.")

Among my pearls of wisdom from Athens Summer Games and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino:

"[A]fter [French Baron Pierre] du Coubertin died, he literally gave his heart to the Olympic cause. His heart was removed from his body and placed in a monument in Greece. Now, I've heard of dissecting frogs, but . . .." - Athens, 2004 

"One thing I was really hoping for in these Olympics was for some American athlete to pull an act of protest against the war in Iraq similar to the protest black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos exhibited at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City [against racism] . . ..  So far, though, it's been a damned disappointment. I didn't really expect any kind of a protest from the swimmers, especially since so many of them are from Orange County, California. Nor did I expect any such protest from the female gymnasts, since most of them are too young to vote. I figured that the best chance for such a protest would come from the track and field events, as the Smith/Carlos protest did, because most of the track and field athletes are minorities, and minorities are normally targeted by military recruiters in this country to join the military, after which they go to fight - and die - in an unjust war like the one we're in now. No such luck so far." - Athens, 2004

"Somewhere along the line, the U.S. men's soccer team began to resemble the Democratic Party - just when you think they're getting their act together, they blow it and have to start from scratch again." - Athens, 2004

"At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Jimmy Carter attended the opening ceremonies as President Clinton's guest. I was completely repelled by this. I know Jimmy Carter is from Georgia, and he had been the state's governor and all that, but the fact is he had a lot of nerve showing up at those ceremonies. He practically destroyed the Olympic movement when he boycotted the Moscow Olympics; he should have boycotted the Atlanta Olympics, too." - Athens, 2004 

"Just as Creedence Clearwater Revival never had a number one hit single, and just as Adlai Stevenson II never became President, so Michelle Kwan has to console herself with being one of history's also-rans. Well, maybe not. People who say 'You don't win a silver medal, you lose the gold' obviously never won a silver medal. And Kwan has one." - Torino, 2006

"We've been told that Americans will only watch the Olympics on TV when American athletes are doing great. If that's the case, how come no one's watching men's curling?" - Torino, 2006

"[Skier Bode] Miller told several interviewers that expectations were raised too high, and that he only came to the Olympics to ski hard and have a good time. Medals? No, he didn't care about medals. And if you saw him ski at Torino these past two weeks, he obviously meant it.  Pardon me for asking, but if Olympic medals are bunk, why bother competing for them?" - Torino, 2006 (Miller redeemed himself in Vancouver four years later.)

"If the long jump in track and field is based strictly on how far you jump, why is ski jumping based on both how far you jump and how gracefully you jump? Hello? It's ski jumping! Grace shouldn't have anything to do with gliding eighty miles an hour into the sky!" - Torino, 2006

Tomorrow - my greatest hits from Beijing (2008) and Vancouver (2010)!