Olympic Absurdity

The older I get the less patience I have for Olympic bragadochio. It's an athletic competition, it's World War N, it's the press being even more hysterically irresponsible than usual. An athlete is touted as being primed for five gold medals. Why can't we just say that Soandso is good at sport suchandsuch, he intends to compete, competition means trying to win, and in the Olympics a victory is commemorated with a gold medal? Why can't we remember that many of these sports already have world championships, already have world records? A World Cup or a world record is a far better guage of excellence than any two weeks of multi-nationalist hysteria.

In the 1960s I was mad for skiing and mad about how great a racer Jean Claude Killy was. I remember thinking that JC could DQ or finish last in each of the three alpine disciplines and he'd still be the greatest alpiine racer in the world, the greatest ever: the Olympics didn't prove anything but how crazy nations and their press could be about an unhealthy special event. JC won all three golds. I was glad. But it didn't prove anything about JC or about alpine ski racing. And it certainly didn't prove anything about France or the United States or Pakistan. (Not that France doesn't have some hairy mountains! Ayee!) Those who follow skiing know how great Bode Miller is. He goes for broke, DQs a lot. Notice: if Sasha Cohen or Irina Slutskaya had been skating in the Ice Follies, they wouldn't have fallen. Shizuka Arakawa skated beautifully, but tomorrow the order of judgment might be different: and different again next week. The Olympics prove only how insecure rabid nationalism is. (And I wish the commentators would keep their traps shut when the lesser skaters have the ice. They're not perfect? Look what they are doing. On the golf course I don't want my slice 180 yards off the tee to be compared to Tiger's 360 yards down the middle.

Chad Hedrick, Marion Jones ... promising gold is insane. Their coaches promising, reporters promising ... They should promise to do their best. Promising to be the best in advance of an event is insane. Shades of the New York Yankees.

I love sports. I love spectator sports. But I hate Olympic fever. And World Series fever. Second place should be a proud accomplishment. Number two is a goat? I'll never forget the ashen looks on some LA Dodgers faces as they were losing a Series they'd been favored for. The guys who'd finished third, sixth, tenth ... were home enjoying a BBQ; the runner-ups looked like they were in hell.

When I ran the mile I never finished first (neither did I ever try that hard and I certainly never trained hard). I had any number of third place finishes and at least one or two second place finishes. One time I finished fourth. Fortunately I never defined myself in terms of the mile. If I had I either should have won or been a basket case.