I’ve become an Olympics Cynic.
There.
I said it.
Looking back, the last Olympics that I was really “into”. 1988 in Calgary and that was only because I was hoping for another Miracle of Ice, but the ’88 U.S. men’s hockey team never played defense.
Not many scandals in 1988 just reports of scandalous behavior in Calgary.
Since then, I’ve watched the Olympics break into more scandal (Ben Johnson in 1988), the Dream Team (sure the USA wins in basketball but I always liked the idea of beating the world’s best with our unpaid players) and all of the tawdry, unsavory backroom dealings to get the games to Atlanta, Athens, Albertville or Beijing. At least, in Athens, the government “took out” all of the stray cats before the Games so I guess that’s a positive.
Yet my own kids are very entertained by watching this world of bobsledding, figure skating, hockey and curling. My son and I have spoken about the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, the luger from Georgia, as well as his newfound interest in Scandinavian countries. (He still has little appreciation for the fact I took three semesters of Norwegian in college in the mid-1990s).
With Olympic video so hard to come by, at least for free, I should make him watch a simple serenade. The ABC Wide World of Sports open from about 1974. Yup, the year the old man was born.
And to think…this was an era where Match Game ’74 aired and it was STILL good enough to land a 30 share and leak more money than most shows pull in for ads in 2010!
Update: Now my son is mesmerized by this epic curling showdown between the United States and Great Britain. Whatever works, right?
