Olympics

I got sucked up by the Olympics. I actually have a ton of stuff to post, but I started looking at the opening ceremonies a couple of weeks ago, and my nights were gone until last Sunday. There really is something magical about the Olympics. It's amazing to watch all these sports I never see and hear all the personal stories of the competitors. I was also very impressed with the architecture and production of the games by China. Certainly the games were not without controversy (child labor anyone?) but still I was very impressed overall.

I probably watched more coverage this Olympics than any other year in the past including the Salt Lake games in '02. I watched all the traditional sports like gymnastics, volleyball, swimming and track, but I also got a good look at badminton, table tennis and water polo. I didn't do much with the basketball. I watched a few quarters, but Olympic basketball never seems to match up to the other competition from a drama standpoint (in my opinion). The swimming was amazing and the gymnastics always seems superhuman to me. I also loved the Jamaican runner stories (Bolt et. al.). The sporting tragedies are also there and painful to watch, but part of the experience. The baton dropping for the men and women in the 4x100m was hard to see as well as the women's 110m hurdles (favored US woman clipped second to last hurdle). Phelps was the obvious story of the games and will be a great memory for years to come.

I must say that for those of you who do not have a DVR, the investment just for the Olympics alone is well worth it. We got one when we bought our house three years ago (came with it from the previous owners) and I don't know that I could ever go back. I probably do end up watching a little more TV which is bad, but I haven't seen a commercial in 3 years. The Olympics is especially good for this as there is really a lot of down time between events. Some of this is filled with great personal stories, which I usually watch, but there are still a lot of commercials and a lot of preliminary events. My experience this year basically consisted of coming home from work, getting the kids in bed and sitting down to 15 hours of recorded Olympics. I could usually make it through the 15 hours in about 3. I skipped all commercials, all preliminary events (finals only), all pre-final games (would fast forward through first 2-3 volleyball games until I was at a potentially winning game, all non final quarters (watched last quarter of water polo and basketball) and diving (for whatever reason, I just never get into diving...not that the athletes are not amazing, I'm just not cultured enough to appreciate it). It really was 3 hours of sporting nirvana and I got to have it every night for 2 weeks (literally 15 hours EVERY DAY to mow through)...great way to see the games. I am glad they are over as I didn't really get anything done during those two weeks but I'm already looking forward to 2010 and Torino. Feel free to stop by anytime after 8:30 as I'm sure I'll be home and glued to the tube.