For forty years, ever since I was old enough to know what the Olympics was, I have been mesmerized and obsessed by it. For the sports lover in me, it's a quadrennial (or biannual, depending on your love for the Winter Games) sports orgy (or even a literal orgy, if you're lucky enough to have digs in the Olympic Village). For the American in me, it's another chance to cheer on the competitors representing your country with pride. For the idealist in me, it's another attempt to experience the Olympic ideal of coming together in a spirit of peace and good faith, which somehow manages to emerge no matter how some may desecrate it.
I'm not an idiot, okay? I know the Olympics has been marred with scuzziness and tragedy. After all, the first Summer Olympics I watched was Munich in 1972. I know how the Olympics have been manipulated, dishonored and cheapened over the decades.
So why bother?
Because if you love sports, or have loved sports, it has seemed less worthy of our attention over the years. Mercenary and sleazy athletes, outrageous ticket prices, economic systems that somehow seem to tilt all the talented athletes to Yankee Stadium - I've lost a lot of interest in the four major sports leagues in America. College athletics just seem like another scuzzy lot, especially now that Joe Paterno is shown to be far less saintly than many of us thought for so long.
But in every Olympics, something wonderful happens. Often, many wonderful things happen. First of all, someone manages to do something that human beings aren't supposed to be able to do:
2008 - Jazon Lezak is swimming the anchor leg of the 4x100 meter medley. The Great Michael Phelps is swimming the butterfly leg before him, and Lezak expects to have a lead going into the pool. But Phelps is almost a full-body length behind the French swimmer when he touches, and Lezak is swimming against Alain Bernard, who happens to be the world record holder in the freestyle at this distance. Lezak went into a full-out sprint, but was still a half-body length behind Bernard with 25 meters to go. But Lezak got stronger at the close, Bernard faded and Lezak out-touched Bernard for the Gold.
2000 - Rulon Gardner, a farmboy from Wyoming, and with a heart big as Montana, wins the Gold medal in Greco-Roman wresting by defeating Aleksander Korelin, who hadn't lost a match in 13 years and hadn't given up a point in 6 years.
I'm not even going to bother rehashing the 1980 United States Ice Hockey team.
Apart from wonderful athletic achievements, wonderful moments of other kinds always happen at the Olympics.
In Beijing, Dara Torres, the Grande Dame of the American Swimming Team, helped orchestrate a slow-down of the start of a heat in her best event, the 50 meter freestyle, to allow another competitor a chance to change into another swimsuit, which had unexpectedly ripped right before the swimmers were to take the deck. When it seemed certain that the swimmers would be called to the blocks, Torres actually came off the blocks and appealed directly to the officials to permit the swimmer to get to the deck. The officials permitted the slowdown, the swimmer emerged from the locker room in a new swimsuit... and Dara won the heat.
Dara's gesture will always stand out to me as one of the most magnificent displays of sportsmanship I have ever seen.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Olympics have thrilled me in countless ways for 40 years. It's going to happen again.
Yes, it's filled with scandal and sleaze. It's also filled with human greatness.
I'll be writing on the Olympics for the next two weeks, most likely sporadically - in fact, this may be the last time I write about it - I have never been one likely to win a gold medal for writing discipline. I just want to share it with anyone else who feels the same way. Let's keep an eye out for each other's diaries and have fun!
BTW - I'm pretty sure it's already happened, but since I go into a total media freeze-out during the Olympics for fear of stumbling upon spoiler results reports, I have no idea right now, but if Daley Thompson doesn't light the cauldron tonight, it's a travesty. He is England's greatest Olympian.
UPDATE: How awesome to see this piece on the Community Spotlight! I wrote a live-blog of the Opening Ceremonies, but I'm not posting it until tomorrow. In the meantime, if you want to read my thoughts of the past several Olympics, I wrote about the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver here and also here.
I wrote about Beijing in 2008 here.