August 24, 2008

Now that the Olympic games are over, I can let loose with a few complaints.

I can't believe race-walking is still and Olympic sport while softball and baseball will not be. Who was the first idiot to challenge someone to a race on foot with the stipulation that you cannot run? Why not add race-hopping or race-skipping as official events?

I hope the Chinese gymnastic team members are 12 years old. Here in sports-crazed America, ESPN glorifies 14 year old basketball phenoms, 12 year old golfers who can shoot 9 under par, and if a 7 year old can throw 91 mph, he might get a $4M signing bonus from the Yankees right now. Yet if we get beat by young athletes from other countries, we complain. (The NBC folks were completely hating on the Chinese girls.) I'd be more embarrassed than upset if I got beat by a little kid at a sport I spent my whole life training for. Leads to my next point...

Why are some athletes and coaches so devastated and disappointed by a silver medal? I realize they have spent probably 14+ hours a day for 14+ years training for their 3 minutes of Olympic glory, but a silver still means you are 2nd best out of 6,000,000,000+ people. That's not too bad.

How come every competitor in table tennis was Chinese? I'm not kidding. A Chinese woman represented the Dominican Republic. 17 Chinese people in the country and 6 of them play ping pong at a world class level.

Why is the degree of difficulty in the diving events only like 3.4 or 3.5 no matter how many twists and somersaults you do? What does it take for a 8.5 or 9.0 degree of difficulty? (See why I hate judging sports?) I still want to see someone do a straight Superman dive.

What the hell is Jackie Chan doing at the closing ceremonies? And how come he wasn't competing in taekwondo or something? By the way, doesn't 'closing' imply that it will end soon? It's been approximately 13 hours since the closing ceremony started and still going strong.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If you ain't first, you're last.