With the winter Olympics at an end, everyone can finally return to their normal lives after taking on the role of the ultimate patriots for those sixteen days in Vancouver. The Olympics are a unique event that takes place every two years alternating between winter and summer games, and really puts everyone’s life on hold for that short period of time. No matter how the economy is, natural disasters, or even wars between countries, as a world we put all our differences aside for the Olympics. It’s like parents going through a rough divorce put coming together for the child’s birthday. As if the countries are saying, “Hey, I know we hate each other, but let’s just be civil for our son (the world) and just enjoy the day.”
But even though all countries in the world are coming together to compete, instead of promoting unity it seems like every competition pins countries against each other. You’ll be watching a competition and all of a sudden have a passionate hate for a country you didn’t remember existed until now. “What!? There’s no way Norway just beat us in Curling. F*** Norway! What have they ever done for the world? How can we not even beat Norway!?… Where is Norway?” Then from there on out you only know Norway as “those bastards who beat us in curling.” I don’t think anyone can honestly say they didn’t shout some hateful obscenities during the men’s ice hockey final against Canada. But even after losing we tend to comfort ourselves by rationalizing how much “better of a country” we are than the opposing winner. “Whatever, Canada can win a stupid game in the Olympics, but which country invented arena football, monster truck rallies and The Jersey Shore! What’s free healthcare to an awesome military? Exactly!” Or just the basic argument, “Their Canadians, we’re Americans. Game over.” (It’s an effective argument if you just say it confidently than immediately leave the room.)
And during the games there becomes a constant emphasis on “winning” and how many medals each country has as if it solely defines which country is just “the best” in general. Every day we get updates on which country is leading the world in medals, especially because we have such high standards on the United States to win every single event. If a country like Estonia wins one medal it’s a great honor to the country, where as if the United States already has 30 medals we’re still thinking, “We need at least 35 medals to have a solid 5 medal lead of the rest of the world!” But why exactly do we need to win so badly? Why not! The United States is like that kid in high school who was always the best at every sport so everybody liked him. Therefore, the more medals we win, the cooler we are and the more all the other countries are going to like us! And imagine how much money we could get if we traded in all those gold medals to “Cash4Gold”. Can you say no more national debt?
The Olympics also bring to light obscure and underexposed sports like curling and figure skating which aren’t really relevant except during the winter Olympics. It’ll start off where you’re randomly scanning through channels when you stop to watch two people furiously sweeping the ice in front of a gliding stone and think, “what is happening…” After 4 hours you now know each “curler” by name and get excited for every end. This now becomes the only time where repeatedly shouting, “Sweep faster woman! Damn it, sweep faster!” becomes socially acceptable! Before you’d only hear such things said by every character played by a man in a Lifetime movie, but now there’s an exception!
Things you never thought qualified as a sport become some of the most entertaining. For example the ski jump event. Basically, a skier goes off a giant jump at around 60 miles per hour and whoever can go the further distance wins. The idea for this event is so basic, it sounds like something two little kids would come up. “Ok, I make the rules, we each go off the jump as fast as we can and whoever lands the farthest wins!”
“Yeah awesome! Is this dangerous?”
“I hope so!”
But as basic as these sports may seem, the announcers always find some way to make the event more exciting or criticize one of the athletes.
“Launching off the jump we have Germany’s Michael Neumayer, and oh dear, it looks like his left ski was about an inch off the track and that’s really going to affect his score. Yes, you can see him shaking his head in the air with disapproval; he knows what he’s done. And indeed it’s hurt the team as he’s brought their score to 1035.8 a huge deficit from Austria currently at 1035.89, it’ll take all they’ve got to make a comeback.” Meanwhile you have no idea how the scores are calculated and don’t even recognize the flags of the countries in the competition. And with events like half-pipe snowboarding sometimes you forget you’re even watching the Olympics until the little NBC symbol comes back up on the screen.
Overall it was a successful Olympics as the United States came out with the most medals won. So at least until we have to prove ourselves again at the summer Olympics the United States will remain “the best.”
John Jacobs can be reached at jjacobs@ut.edu.
ski jumping is judged not by who jumps furthest, but who lands in a specific zone the best. p.s. i hate you