Hello again everybody. I haven’t written here in a long while. I’m well, thanks for asking.
(I wrote this last week but didn’t get it posted. They were still going on at that time.)
The Olympics are winding down now. I have always been a huge sports fan, but that has changed for me lately. I have trouble following anything anymore, but that’s a topic for a later blog.
I’ve been watching the Olympics with renewed interest this year. I remember as a child and young man way back in the _0s when watching the Olympics was a heck of an experience. We couldn’t seem to wait until they came by and it seemed that each event was memorable. I remember watching the Black Power salute live. For me it was as powerful as anything I had seen. I remember the Munich tragedy when so many Israeli athletes were murdered. Watching that live was just sickening. I remember athletes like Bob Beamon, Jim Ryun, George Foreman, Mark Spitz, Mary Decker, Mary Lou Retton, Dick Fosbury, and a host of others. We cheered like crazy, knowing that these were truly amateur athletes who really had to live on nothing and to train in obscurity for maybe one chance to shine.
All that changed when we Americans decided we should start sending professionals to the Olympics and lobbied hard for a change in the rules. The first basketball “Dream Team” changed everything for me. I couldn’t watch them even a little bit. I was disgusted by every 100-30 victory over Egypt and every other country who dared try. Disgusted when Nike refused to let them accept their gold medals with the Reebok logo on their sweats. Reebok was the sponsoring company, but Nike owned half of the players for endorsements. Anyone else remember the compromise? Yeah. Nike relented when the players draped the American flag over the Reebok logo. Great use of the colors, right? Who wouldn’t be proud of that? Yeah, neither am I. Some folks get so worked up about flag burning that happened 40 years ago. I think this was MUCH worse.
That was in 1992, and I honestly haven’t watched much since then until this year. For some reason, it has been exciting once more. I really loved watching the different sports again. Badminton? Sure. Triathlon? You bet. Equestrian jumping? Mais oui. Naturally, the star is Michael Phelps. He is a compelling character despite his Wolverine status. Nice guy, hard worker, and often at a loss for words in nearly every interview. You have to love that. It was fun watching every night as he racked up the gold. Did he really win that last race? Wonderful stuff. The most gold medals in one Olympics.
Then it got goofy again.
“Michael Phelps: Greatest Olympian Ever!” Michael Phelps: Greatest Athlete Ever!”
Are you kidding me? Just because of the number of gold medals? This is from the news people and journalists covering the games and many back in the states. I’m so sick of hyperbole!
Look, I know this isn’t Phelps’ fault. The media is ruining a beautiful story. Now I think about the fact that he even had 8 CHANCES for gold medals. Why? He can swim better than anybody else in the butterfly (?!?) and is pretty good in freestyle. Put them together with the relays and you have medal opportunities galore. Where did the butterfly come from? Help me out here. Do people swim the butterfly stroke for fun? If they’re stranded somewhere and have to swim for it, do they think “I’ll never make it if I don’t butterfly my way to shore.”
How could anyone else have a chance at 8 medals besides a swimmer? There are breaststroke and backstroke events too. How about runners? There are 4 ways to swim here, how many ways are there to run? As far as I can tell, all the track events have people running with the same motion. If they give gold medals to backstrokers, how about a gold for the person who goes fastest running backwards? I didn’t see that event. Tell me that doesn’t make sense. I’d watch that one.
Greatest Olympian ever? Please. You watch American beach volleyball and you can see the dominance. The Chinese divers, American basketball, even table tennis and boxers. The greats compete for 2 weeks, work very hard and suffer as much or more than swimmers. All of this is to earn one medal. He earns 8 in about 6 days and so we discuss whether any athlete has ever been as good? Sorry Jim Thorpe, Jesse Owens and Muhammad Ali. Michael Phelps must be greater than all of you put together. Your total in gold medals is only 7.