August 19, 2004
My Big Fat Greek Olympics
Olympics have been trouble-free, terror-free, and pretty compelling...
While the Olympics have often resembled a ghost town with painfully empty stands, the fears of an unready Athens or a terror attack have so far been thankfully unrequited. And the games themselves? Surprisingly good.
From an American perspective, the much ballyhooed swimmer Michael Phelps has been for the most part on the money in his medal collecting, though there is no sum large enough we'd not pay if we could get Phelps to put on swim pants that go just a little bit higher. The Iraqi soccer team has been a pleasant surprise, though while being thankful Saddam and his heirs are gone, especially considering their firsthand knowledge of the regime's barbarity, the team doesn't seem to appreciate what it took to accomplish that. First lesson my young Iraqi friends - freedom isn't free...
The most compelling stories so far have been in US gymnatics. Paul Hamm, he of the painfully helium-balloon-voiced pair of brothers representing the US men, had a horrendous first routine, on the vault, and managed with increasingly remarkable performances to climb back in the hunt to medal. And with one of the greatest routines you'll ever see on the high bar, he retook the lead and captured gold by the smallest margin ever. For the women, slightly less dramatics, though Carly Patterson had to come from behind to win a slightly more comfortable all around women's gold, the first since Mary Lou Retton.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East/West struggle, much of the high drama vanished from the competition of countries at the Olympics. Refreshingly, the high drama of athletic excellence and competition managed to fill the void, and an Olympics many thought would be dull or passe have been outstanding, to say the least.
Posted by MEC2 at August 19, 2004 07:57 PM