Rings of Rage (aka my Olympic Rant)
First off, Canada hasn’t won a single medal so far while even Mongolia has won 2. Yes, Mongolia. In fact both Uzbekistan and Togo have won medals and their school gymnasiums have like, corrugated metal floors or something.
Which brings me to the whole Canadian attitude of ‘it’s not about how well we do, it’s only a matter of how much fun we have’.
Um…bullshit.
That kind of attitude is great for minor hockey. It’s what you tell a 6-year-old so they don’t cry after letting in a crappy goal. But we’re talking about the Olympics here. If you’re expected to medal and instead don’t even qualify for the finals you should be pissed off. I sure as hell am.
Can you imagine pulling that crap at your work?
Yes, I know I spelled ‘report’ ‘txloer’ but it’s not about how legible my work is, it’s about how much fun I have doing it and t-x-l-o-e-r is way more fun to type than r-e-p-o-r-t.
Saying that, I was watching the Olympics on NBC this morning (because CBC was showing Olympic baseball and while I’ll watch pretty much any sport at the Olympics I have to draw the line somewhere). Anyway, the attitude on NBC was completely different but just as lemon suckingly lame.
They have perfected the ‘I totally would have won if it wasn’t for the fact that they made me wait to long / kept the stadium too cold / told me that robotic super horses are not allowed in the dressage event.’
Now I have a whole world of respect for Olympic athletes, and I totally couldn’t do it myself (except maybe in pole vaulting cause of my weirdly long arms and freakishly bendy back) but maybe we should let our six-year-olds cry every now and then – you know, instill the Olympic spirit earlier.
The Olympic motto is, after all: Stronger, Faster, Higher not Funner, Whiner, Txloer
Yay, we can comment again! I agree with you on all points. The UK coverage is fun, as the British mentality in all competitions, from Olympics to World Cup to Eurovision, is that on paper we could win, but we know we’ll somehow screw up and lose. So when the Brits do win medals, the commentators are literally beside themselves with excitement, yelling and cheering. I think the US commentators are just to jaded, having won so many medals.
What cracked me up the other day was a group of American track and field competitors complaining about the coverage of Phelps, saying how many more medals he could compete for and how it was all really just swimming back and forth! They objected to him being called the “greatest Olympian” too, because he only swam, while they ran, and some ran *and* jumped!