The Olympics: Why I Don't Love Them

What sports fan isn’t 100% crazy about the Olympics?

Well, I’m not. When I let myself start to care about the events and the athletes, the very things that make the Olympics special are the same things that bother me. (Full disclosure: as I write, I’m watching a cross-country skiing competition among guys from faraway European countries to which I have no attachment.. and am thoroughly enjoying it.)

First, I find Olympic competition fundamentally cruel. All sports are, but the Olympics are in a class of their own because of the “every-four-years-ness” of the games. You can be the best in the world for 3 years and 11 months, but if you have a bad day at the Olympics, it’s like you never existed. We see it every Olympics – the huge favorite who somehow flops, creating an unexpected victory for some underdog. Of course, we so quickly shift our focus to that new person that we forget the other one.

But, you ask, that criticism goes for sports in general, right? If someone from (say) Indianapolis has a bit of a glitch in (for example) a Super Bowl, why is that different from an Olympic collapse?

Well, in addition to the four-year wait before the athlete gets to try again, almost none of us care about these sports in the interim. Not even a little.
In contrast, the World Cup is a huge quadrennial event, but the world (outside America, we have an exemption) watches and cares about soccer all the time.

But if you can name anyone who won the annual World Championships in most Olympic sports – even if they won the last three years straight – you  are special, because almost no one else can. Well, unless they actually compete in that sport.  So the distinction between ‘immortal Olympic hero’ and ‘complete nobody no one ever heard of’ seems too huge, and too arbitrary.

Second, I feel conflicted-to-troubled about the nationalistic/patriotic element of the Olympics.

It’s almost impossible to resist the urge to see the athletes as embodiments of their nations, as the Olympics and the media encourage this in every conceivable way. And it’s true that they are actually participating only by virtue of the support given them by quasi-governmental (or literally governmental) national sports associations.  So those Americans we see romping around in Vancouver are pretty much our employees. That may be reason enough to root for them.

But it’s hard to resist the perspective that sees national validation in Olympic success, even though it’s obviously ridiculous. We all know that Olympic success correlates more with national population size, and wealth, and even climate (all areas in which the U.S. got a good draw, by the way) than it does with any index of  national “virtue.”
Or maybe I’m wrong, and the Olympics really did demonstrate that East Germany was a fantastic country after all.

It’s only natural to root for our own people.  But if we Americans had more exposure to the other participating countries’ athletes, it might help us remember that these competitions are not tests of national greatness, but only games.  Highly publicized and anticipated games, but games nonetheless.

I do have to give the Olympics some credit on this point.  While the athletes march into the opening ceremonies by country, they are combined at the closing ceremonies, an attempt to help us remember that they are really representing all of us.

Finally, too many of the Olympic sports are, well, not sports. They’re incredible athletic activities, worthy of admiration and wonder – but where I come from, sports have objectively determined results, not someone deciding who looked better while playing.

At Salt Lake City in 2002 we all saw how twisted the subjective judging of events like figure skating can get. Weirder still, there are events that mix objective and subjective competition, like ‘freestyle mogul’ – a race against the clock that is interrupted by 2 crazy X-games ski jumps. What sense can anyone make of that? And while I’m in curmudgeon mode, don’t get me started on the random new “sports” that are constantly being added to appeal to the skateboarders out there. Dude, it’s lame.

I could go on – you may well have your own set of complaints (for most people, the TV coverage makes it onto the list). Like most of us, I warm up to the Olympics when they’re going on, and appreciate them for what they are, even with  their limitations.

So you may not see me running through the streets waving a flag when we win the next gold in half-pipe. Whatever half-pipe is.

Of course, if our athlete gets a bad mark from the French judge… and is an unknown with a scrappy underdog story up against a three-time world champion from some other country… where someone was rude to me once... I’m in.

In that case, USA! USA!