Olympic Glory

The 2008 Olympics are officially over. For the past two and a bit weeks we have been glued to our television sets watching athletes perform in sports we don’t care about most of the time.

Aside from a sport or two we might care about, we will forget about most of the performances with the exceptions of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. Quick, who won the women’s 100 metres? Who won the marathon? My guess is that you don’t know the answer, even though both of these events took place less than a week ago. If you have forgotten them already, just how important are these competitions?

In some sports, the results don’t often reflect the efforts of the athletes. Much has been said about the irregularities of the judging in tae kwan do, wrestling and boxing. Diving and gymnastics fall into this category of suspect scores.

So why not ditch the Olympics altogether?

I don’t know if you have noticed, but with the coverage of the Olympics, coverage of the bad things of the world has decreased. Newspapers have only so many pages and television and radio have only so much time. If you put in more sports, you have to take something away. It has been kind of nice focusing on the accomplishments of men and women instead of the destruction.

I sort of like the idea of most of the countries of the world assembling for a common purpose. I like it even more that the all of them seem to get along together for a few weeks.

So, in spite of all its flaws, I like the idea of the Olympic games.