Well, the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics have come and gone, and they pretty much went the way I expected. Fortunately, extraneous political and terrorist activity didn't cloud the games although the argument can be legitimately made that with the exclusion of Russia (and Belarus) for their invasion of Ukraine, there was a huge gap in them with so many missing premier athletes. For this alone, I thought that NBC, the network covering it all, was a bit silly with their overemphasis on national medal tallies and the "competition" between the USA and China for most gold medals. Don't get me wrong: I tend to root for the "home team" but I don't get carried away with nationalism, either. I think the shining moment, though, for me was in the men's track 1,500 meter final when, after all the preliminary drama about the two favorites (from Norway and Britain) having a bitter rivalry between them, the American slipped in there at the very end and won it...ha-ha-ha! As I wrote before the Olympics, I tended to follow objectively measurable individual sports, enjoying the track and field, biking and swimming competitions the most and generally avoiding diving, gymnastics and team sports. I dug the golf, although for some reason I veered away from the tennis and table tennis...well, the latter was obvious since I had trouble following the lightning-fast motion of the ball across the table. I'm glad it's over...especially all those commercials featuring star American athletes. I'm more in tune with participatory athletics over the elite elements of various sports, but often I can learn a lot about proper form from watching the best in the business...and for better or worse it's definitely a business these days....
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'..and for better or worse it's definitely a business these days.' Back in the days when we only had a few TV channels to choose from and no way to record something to watch later, I really loved watching the Olympics, both summer and winter. I enjoyed it all, from Nadia Comanici to Bruce Jenner to Eddie the Eagle. I especially enjoyed those who had no chance of winning a medal, but were still good enough to have made it that far. I've never had much in the way of athletic ability and it just amazed me to watch these people compete. But as it has dropped the pretense of being a strictly amateur competition and went more to the professional side of sports I seem to have lost interest in the games. Still, I would have watched some of it if the weather hadn't been so darn nice here, but as it were, I decided to be out doing my own things rather than to watch others do theirs.
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