I’ve heard more complaints than I have praise over the last few weeks about the Olympic Games.
Women are upset because their show isn’t coming on. Men are irate because they aren’t getting their regular basketball fix. And I’m tired of waking up at 3 a.m. to find that Bob Costas has pitched a tent inside my television.
It’s just too much.
Every four years we send the best and brightest to the Games with the hope of winning an Olympic medal.
I applaud the athletes who have trained over the past three years, day-in and day-out.
But honestly speaking, the Winter Olympics seem more like a suicide course for those who just can’t get enough of extreme sports.
Take for instance one of the sports involved — skiing.
It doesn’t matter which kind of skiing, any way you cut it it’s pretty much a death wish. And much like death wishes, you can get your skiing from various methods — there’s alpine, cross-country, freestyling, nordic combined, and the ever-popular ski jumping.
Any of these are pretty dangerous. You might miss a turn on that 70-degree angle drop in the alpine and fall helplessly forward, your body careening head over feet. Or, you could fall straight on your head after trying to impress everyone in the freestyle, after traveling more than 50 feet in the air. Regardless, it all hurts the same.
But what really has me scared is the biathlon event, which combines skiing and marksmanship.
That’s just what the world needs, some irate athlete on skis (who just missed a medal by a few hundreths of a second) toting a gun, firing at innocent bystanders and calling it a sport.
But that’s only a portion of the madness.
What if you took a trashcan top and tried to slide down Mt. Everest, just for the sport of it.
Well, that’s pretty much the gist of the next category of Olympic sports.
You can bobsled, skeleton, or luge — either way, you’re bound to get hurt. Luging, the safer of the group, involves a single contestant sliding feet first down an icy track, while the skeleton switches the feet to the rear and the head to the front. But imagine piling a whole group of people onto the sled with you, and trying to keep it intact. Now that’s downright stupid.
There are sports that everyone seems to love, the truly American sports — figure skating, snow boarding, speed skating, and ice hockey. But these, too, are dangerous.
Would any of you really fathom the thought of strapping ice skates on and having a partner swing you around the ice?
Would you think of trying to jump the Grand Canyon on a skateboard? Not quite.
And as for speed skating and ice hockey, it’s hard enough keeping one’s balance and concentration consistent in most sports. But when you throw in frozen ice, deadly sharp blades, and athletic wear the thickness of a t-shirt, it just doesn’t seem to appeal to me.
And would someone please tell me what curling is?
I do have some good news for my Olympic-frustrated readers. In just a few days, the Games will be over.
We will soon be able to watch ER, Saturday Night Live and our multiple NBA games. Pretty soon, Salt Lake City will be a distant memory, and God Bless America for that.
