Column: Full Court Press; The Winter Olympics are dumb
The Winter Olympics are dumb.
There, I said it.
I’ve been saying this for two weeks now and generally people have been taken aback. It’s as if disliking the games was un-American.
If refusing to watch women and gay men prance around on skates in an event called ice dancing is un-American, call me Han Xiaopeng.
I’m not ethically and principally against the Winter Olympics, I just choose not to watch them. Why? It’s not entertaining. Am I impressed by the skill of these athletes? Of course.
I know I could never make it to the bottom of the hill in the giant slalom. Well, maybe I could, but some parts of my body might cross the finish line before others.
I can respect the difficulty of pulling off a triple toe loop-double toe loop-double loop combination (I don’t really know what that is, I just looked it up). I can respect the stupidity of skiing off a giant jump to see how far one can go.
I understand that these are not easy, nor painless, nor sane activities, but I simply don’t care to watch them.
Curling usually takes the brunt of the Winter Olympic jokes. I do think curling is a very cool game, but it doesn’t belong in the Olympics.
After all, Chutes and Ladders is a very cool game, but they’re not handing out any medals for that. A lot of people make fun of curling without really knowing what it is.
In order to help you ridicule the pseudo-sport, I’ll clarify it for you.
In curling, one team member slides along a sheet of ice gripping a 40-pound stone. That person then releases the stone toward a target painted on the other side of the ice sheet. Other team members sweep the ice in order to
make the rock slide faster or slower.
That’s about it. I think the prestige and value of a gold medal is greatly diminished when they’re given out for sweeping. I have lots of practice dusting, but nobody ever invited me to Italy to do it professionally.
The games do have some redeeming points. Hockey certainly belongs in the Olympics, though I’m still not very drawn to it. The races – skiing, speed skating, etc. – are fine; let the fastest man win.
So if you’d like, continue watching 15-minute superstars like Sasha Cohen and
Apolo Ohno. I’ll be watching the Jazz game on TiVo and gearing up for World Cup 2006.
Ben Walker is a junior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to
benwalker@cc.usu.edu