About the Recent Paris Summer Olympics

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....