They’re coming up, in just over two months from now – Feb. 10-26 in Turin (Torino), Italy! NBC has been flashing that Olympic logo for several weeks now and it gives me a bit of a buzz every time I see it. Face it, the Winter Games have an intrinsic glamour that the Summer Games sometimes lack. Gone are the 350-lb. Turkish and Eastern European weightlifters and wrestlers; here come the (ever-improving) Chinese figure skaters, the Scandinavian downhillers, the Dutch and Japanese speed skaters!
I’m particularly looking forward to hockey, because it’s played according to international rules on the big rink, which makes for a more dynamic, fluid game (although the recently redrawn rules for NHL hockey seem to be a big improvement in that direction).
That, and the ski jump. There’s just something about that silly and arguably overrated hurling of one’s self into the big air that is so daring and elementally appealing… even if the emergence of “X-treme” sports threatens to diminish the novelty, and even pre-eminence, of some Olympic events.
And the short-track speed skating. Very cool, fast, aggressive, dangerous, unpredictable and exciting to watch, and the top competitors don’t have to be unusually tall or be bulked up on steroids to be competitive in it (in fact, those would probably work against them).
Now, if only the Olympic organizers have fixed the problems with the judging of some of the events. I guess we’ll have to wait and see about that.
And speaking as a football fan, it’s nice to have the Games to look forward to after the end of the football season. (Seasonal Affective Disorder might as well be renamed Post-Football Season Affective Disorder for at least some of us sports fans…)
So, are you beginning to get the Olympic bug, and if so, for which events?