The Olympic Wrap
It's been great fun these past couple of weeks watching the Olympics on television. Sports events like the Olympics are one of the few programs that I would get a TV for. Some of the highlights for me this time around involved my recent return to outdoor volleyball. The US Men were somewhat disappointing, with Blanton and Nygaard failing to win a single match. The women, on the other hand, proved dominant. I was cheering for Misty May and Holly McPeak last time around, and this time it was no different, only they were on different teams. What a dominant performance by May and Kerri Walsh, though... didn't drop a single game during the whole tournament.
Speaking of dominance, I was disappointed that the softball team allowed a run in the gold medal match. Still, I guess allowing one run in an entire olympics is pretty darn dominant. Heh.
On the flipside, let me just say how satisfying it was to watch the Dream Team lose. Those cocky sunsabitches had it comin' man. In the last decade the rest of the world has caught up and USA Basketball has sat on their asses. The same thing was happening in the decade prior to the first Dream Team, and so they went for the quick and dirty solution and got NBA stars. Well, looks like the kludge has outlived its usefulness. It was so strange rooting for them to lose. I mean, it was so much more satisfying to see them go down, patriotism aside. I think it was the same part of me that rooted for the Iraqi soccer team.
On to gymnastics, which I do enjoy, to a certain extent. And that extent is defined by the end of the competition. I can't tell you how annoyed I was at the amount of coverage the "controversy" with Paul Hamm's medal was getting. And then, to add insult, NBC found it necessary to use more than an hour's worth of coverage in prime time on the "champions gala," which was the medalists performing toned down easy versions of their routines just for the crowd. I have no problem with the gala itself, but I think it's ridiculous that NBC spent that much time on it at the expense of so many other sports which deserve that time in the limelight.
What NBC did get right this time around was the near round-the-clock coverage spread over their various networks. With a TiVo, one could easily get the full coverage of their favorite event (as long as it involved a US team, I suppose). That is, except for the most important match of the entire Olympics. as far as I was concerned.
Yes, I'm talking about the gold medal match in women's soccer. Because it went into overtime, I had to end up looking up the result online instead of being able to agonize over it on the TiVo. Oh well. What a way to end a run. Mia Hamm got to go out on top instead of the disappointing finish in the semis of last year's World Cup. Now that was satisfying. Sure, a lot of luck was on their side in that final, but it was almost as though that was the way it had to be. That and the glimpse of hope that the next generation of stars like Abby Wambach will be able to carry on the legacy.
Anyhow, now that it's over the world can go back to the usual pedantic squabbles between politics and countries for their news. I think that's what makes the Olympics so great... for just a few moments the world is distracted from all the other nonsense out there.