The Olympics
My wife and I both love the Olympics..Summer and Winter. Since my wife was once a championship swimmer, she really gets into watching the swimming events at the Summer Olympics. And since I was a teenager, I got really into skiing..and used to want to be a downhill skier. While I love to ski at incredibly fast speeds, I just never had the opportunity (or talent) to really be ultra-competitve at it, though I did race NASTAR many times and did well. And obviously my wife (and I to an extent) enjoy watching the figure skating, luge, speed skating..etc..thats going on now.
But it seems no one is watching the Olympics this year. The coverage is pretty poor as well, here in the USA at least. I checked the ESPN website and according to their polls, no one watched or cared about it last weekend. Which is too bad..I love the whole spirit of the games, and almost every event is exciting to me..I even got into "curling" once. Yes, I admit it.
The USA needs to market their athletes better. Sure, some of the teenagers know about shaun White, the "Flying Tomato", and maybe some if us know about Bode Miller...and Michele Kwan..and thats about it.
Do you guys recall Dan Jansen? Summer Sanders? Phil and Steve Maher? Mitch Gaylord? Lenny Krayzelburg? Those are only some of the US successes. Its funny how in Europe, people like Pirmin Zurbriggen are/were superstars..and here..no one cares. I mean..no one here cares about Soccer or Hockey even, elt alone skiing, figure skating, diving..I find it sad. They represent a country in events that most people do not really even watch or care much about.
That said..I do wonder if the Lakers are going to make any trades near the trading deadline :)
4 Comments:
I think everything is hyped up too much. People who don't follow these sort of things already think we've got the medal before they've been handed out. Plus, people already know who has won even before it's on primetime.
I too fully enjoy the olympics, summer and winter. But it seems like when the games are in a foreign country, the coverage sucks and all we hear about are the same 5 american athletes. They talked about some downhill skier the other day who didn't even make it to the finals. She was probably already on a plane headed home at the time, but they still talked about her like she was god. I was over it, I wish NBC would get over it already.
Maybe I'm spoiled. I still look back fondly to the days when the '84 olympics were in LA when I lived there. It seemed like the coverage was constant, and I remember learning about a lot of different countries from the coverage. Now it seems like for every 3 minutes of coverage there are 5 minutes of commercials.
I hate the olympics. I was going to go to the Salt Lake City games but I was a bit scared of the terrorism..i had a place to crash and everything.
Maybe I'll go to the 2010 games in Vancouver.
Wooo!
LAKERS vs. PORTLAND this Tuesday yo!
I love the figure skating. Wanted to be Kristy Yamaguchi back when she won the gold.
Hope you're well!
~ Ash
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