On the Recent Olympics

Well the Winter Olympics are over for another four years and now I have nothing to do but the work I should have been doing all along, so naturally I’m writing this blog post because surely there is something better I can be doing than my assigned tasks.

You’d think.

I always enjoy the Olympics. Yes, I know that the IOC is a cesspool of corruption that rivals Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s business empire. Yes, I know that these things rarely if ever benefit the places that put them on and in about eight years there will be sad little stories in the news featuring abandoned venues and tales of fiscal crisis. Yes, I know that the world did not stop revolving around its axis and the grotesque horror of modern American politics continued along its lethally immoral way unbothered by anything happening with the Olympics. I know all these things. But still.

You need a break sometimes. You need to focus on good things, and that’s what the athletes are for. These people trained for years to be there. Most of them will never win a medal and most of those people already know that going in but they’re there anyway because it’s enough to say that they were there. Many of them were competing in events that nobody had any idea whether or not they exist outside of an Olympics (skicross?) but which were fun to watch anyway and maybe they should be more well known.

Kim and I watched a fair bit of the Olympics this year, in this darkening world. It was a very nice way to try to stay sane in a climate that wants very much to prevent that.

We watched the figure skaters and marveled at the sheer grace and power of it all. You don’t realize how strong these people are until you see the close-up shots. We mostly saw the Americans because that’s what NBC shows to Americans, but I really loved how supportive most of the skaters were with each other – particularly, it has to be said, the American women. Alyssa Liu set a tone, after ditching the sport four years ago and then returning on her own terms to skate with joy for herself and her art, and watching her, Amber Glenn, and Isabeau Levito be there for each other – and in Glenn’s case, for at least one of the Japanese skaters as well, shooing away the press when that skater needed some time to herself – was a refreshing sight in a world consumed by meaningless rivalry.

The fact that a number of skaters managed to convince other skaters to be part of their their routines during the exhibition gala at the end was a lovely thing.

We watched the US women’s and men’s teams win hockey gold over Canada in overtime, in hard-fought games that could have easily (and in the men’s case probably should have) gone the other way but there is only one statistic that matters in the end and they came out on the plus side of it this time. I remember watching the Miracle on Ice in 1980 live, and while this wasn’t exactly the same it was nice to see. The fact that the women’s team declined Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s grudging invitation to visit was glorious, and I can only wish the men were similarly principled.

We watched a lot of the curling, and it was good to see the most sportsmanlike of games live up to its reputation, mostly, except for the Canadian men’s team, who were caught blatantly cheating, responded with obscenities when questioned, and somehow were not only not immediately disqualified, dunked in maple syrup, and sent home in disgrace but also were permitted to win gold in the end. That travesty did not take away from the larger fun of the sport, though.

We watched the speedskating, which always seems like it’s about three breaths away from catastrophe. We watched a pile of skiing events, including the skicross because it’s good goofy fun. We watched the bobsleds and the luge and the skeleton and wondered precisely how anyone would think that would be a good idea even if they were a lot of fun to watch.

We watched a lot of things.

It has to be said that the primary advantage the US has in these games, aside from enough national wealth to fund training for a lot of athletes and a population large enough to find fifty examples of pretty much anything you care to search for, is the simple fact that immigrants choose to come here. This is a valuable lesson that should be more loudly expressed and more eagerly taken to heart in this country.

But now it’s over, and we return to our regularly scheduled lives already in progress.

C’mon baby, put the rock in the house.