I love the Olympics. Let's get it on. gogogogogo!

I don't like sports, but I understand why people do, and I understand why people who enjoy sports enjoy the Olympics. Was this really difficult to figure out?

I like spectacle. I like the ideas behind the Olympics despite their not being paid much attention to. I like that it gets the whole world to pay attention to people in tights for a while. I like that you get glimpses into places you'll never go to or even heard of.

I liked it better when both were held the same year instead of the stagger. I don't care for the rampant nationalism on TV. I hate those stupid soft focus stores on the athletes.

I like sports but the Olympics is different. I dont care about them. Not that i dont like them i just dont care. I wanted to know if anyone did care

I like the olympics, usually good tv. I am quite into athletics and stuff because my Dad used to compete at a high level so i was brought up watching stuff.

I love sports and am going for a masters in sports management currently. I could care less about the olympics and couldn't tell you a single American competitor on the summer squad except the basketball team, tennis and Jennie Finch.

For me the problem is the production, 95% of the coverage is focused on the feel good and sob stories and not on the raw athletism of these competitors. Its almost like a glorified reality tv show.

I used to run track so I like watching the running events because I can understand how amazing the times are.

The Olympics are a quadrennial exhibition of the pinnacle of human physical achievement. When a world record gets set, you have just watched something that has never been done by anyone, in the history of the world, ever. That's amazing to me.

You can also see an incredible range in human ability in a very short time span. You can watch a heavyweight Olympic powerlifter lift, literally, five hundred pounds and then change the channel and watch a four-foot gymnast do consecutive backflips on a balance beam that's six inches wide.

It's top competitors competing on the biggest stage of their life. For most of them, this will be their only chance at an Olympic medal, which to them is a hallowed, sacrosanct object. That's tense, high-stakes competition, and if you can get into it, it can be really fun to watch a kid from Iowa who has trained every day for a decade do something amazing and win a gold medal.

Plus, I love cheering for American athletes. USA!

watching the olympics on tv and watching the olympics live are two very very different experiences. It would be a shame to not experience the latter at least once in your life. If you enjoy any type of competition at all you can enjoy the olympics (even if you dont really enjoy that particular event) because you know that the people there have been training their whole lives for this one moment, and the amount of energy and intensity during that time is awe inspiring.

Of course I dont really CARE who wins or who loses, its the process to determine the winner that I enjoy. Helps that I did track and wrestling in high school, so i've always had more of a passion for those types of individual competitions.

i don't know how anyone can be a sports fan and not like the olympics. you are watching the best athletes in the world do their thing in the most important race of their lives. it's great. especially the swimming.

plus it's basically the 'purest' sports (although clearly not in a drugs sense).

I watch the Olympics, but probably just because I feel I'm supposed to as a sports fan.

It's fun to cheer for someone you will never hear from again, playing a sport you never heard of. Look it up. It's true.

i like the badmitton events. Don't enjoy how the coverage here is focused only on US athletes and ****ty back stories, except for when the athletes are pricks like bode Miller and that black speed skater who would get in a tiff with the rest of the US speedskating team, then it's kind of cool.

I usually hate all these crazy protestors, but if it's against the Chinese Communists than it isn't so bad.

I think the Olympics is gonna be awesome and can't wait to see them! and I hope to attend the Olympics in the future

I don't think there's anything else this year I'm more excited about. I'm probably gonna watch around 1/3 the events or as much as I can manage. In particular men's weightlifting is gonna be ****ing sweet, so psyched, wish I could go and watch a ton of events in person!

I love the Olympics and have since I was a child.

Part of it, is the fact that it is the remnant of a tradition that began in antiquity as a celebration of sport as an alternative to warfare.

I admire the dedication and devotion by the athletes in sports where there are no promises of multi-million dollar contracts or endorsements. I think often times, on the level of the individual athletes, it represents the purest form of competitive spirit that exists in sports today.

What I don't like is the commercialization and politicization of something that I think should be solely about the games being played and the athletes participating in them. For instance, these continued interruptions of the torch route by the 'Free Tibet' radicals really piss me off, because I think it is very, very disrespectful of the athletes.
Now there are starting to be calls of the possibility of a boycott, all of which really makes me feel for the guy who spent the last four years of his life training daily so that he could go for the gold in 15 meter prone pistol shooting or steeplechase or some other event on which this stage, the Olympics, is the largest possible.

That's the idealistic reason. Practically, I just really enjoy watching track & field, international basketball, handball, speed skating, and many other events that rarely get TV time.

Edit to add: Remember this? That's a reason to love the Olympics right there.

As is this

I also kinda hate the fact that 99% of these athletes were practically breeded specifically for olympic competition and have no lives of their own. Just seems kind of dirty to me.

Yes, but American TV does nothing to promote these sports and make me care about them. They are far more worried about Jon Smith who is running for his mother that died of cancer two years ago. I appriciate the athletism everyone has but I don't care about the sports themselves.

Cycling is another sport that had a chance to gain an audience and not just be a fad. Instead the media failed to promote the sport and educate the fans during the lance armstrong era.

ya that's true i forgot that american tv coverage of the olympics is supposedly horrific.

anyway, we're off to sports, and OP is getting points for a one line thread

my wife is in sf right now covering the torch relay near the starting point. she is scared ****less and i think she wore her bicycle helmet just in case things get out of hand like in other locations and people start throwing crap.

we had a chance to go to beijing for her to cover the games, but scheduling conflicts doomed our chances. would have been pretty awesome.

the games? pfffff, snoooooze fest

anyway, we're off to sports, and OP is getting points for a one line thread



What are points ??

if you collect enough, you get a free ham at safeway just before thanksgiving.

There's no supposedly about it. It's an abomination.

I don't love the olympics as much as I used to but I still dig them.

As far as feel-good stories...the way they are presented on American television makes them kind of more annoying than they really are.
Interesting side-stories can really be awesome IF they are done right.

Watch any of Bud Greenspan's Olympics documentaries which sometimes get shown on an HBO or Showtime network and sometimes on ESPNClassic I think.
They are truly great and every single time I see them I gain a newfound respect for the dedication of the athletes who participate in this.
And they aren't as horribly pro-American as the stuff you will see on NBC during the Olympic coverage.

I saw one of the Bud Greenspan ones that was about the freaking equestrain sports. And I hate that stuff and think it looks silly. But then when I saw the presentation of it in the documentary I thought "Holy crap...that's actually really interesting stuff."
If they can get me to actually think the silly equestrian stuff isn't completely stupid and pointless then they must be doing something right.

Many of the great stories are the ones you will practically never hear about on American television and I enjoy learning of the underdog nations who take incredible pride in just one or two medal achievements [as opposed to the U.S. where they are practically expected to win at everything...and even when they win when they aren't supposed to it isn't viewed as that much of a big deal most of the time].

In 1988 Peru won the Silver medal in women's volleyball and the whole country was going crazy about it [my GF who was living in Peru at the time says everyone was watching that game].

I'm pretty sure that if the US womens volleyball team made some great and unexpected run to the championship game it would catch SOME interest but most people wouldn't give a crap.
Nothing like the pride for a country like Peru that doesn't exactly get many chances to claim a gold medal [or any medal at all] in ANY sport.

I knew a guy on the South African Olympic baseball team in 2000 [also competed in the WBC in 2006 where they almost upset Canada].
They were thrilled just to go to the Olympics.
I believe they pulled off a huge upset of New Zealand I think in the championship game of their region just to make it to the Olympics and it was an insane celebration for a team that was not supposed to have any chance at all of even qualifying.
Then at the Olympics they pulled off another upset by beating the Netherlands [who had just defeated Cuba].
they finished in last place and only won that one game but just qualifying for it at all was pretty surprising and actually winning a game there was a fairly big deal for them.


It's some of those stories that I learn about that get me to really like the Olympics a ton.
Since the Beijing games are coming up I suspect that those Bud Greenspan Olympics documentaries will get played again on one network or another. Keep an eye out for them. They are usually 1:30 or 2:00 or something in length but broken up into 3 or 4 different segments of perhaps 20-30 minutes each. So if you are watching a sport that bores you to tears you can just wait for the next one to come on.

I love the older ones the best but the 21st century stories can be really good too.

I really got points, but I dont think that is good. oh no That was one line Think think think I need to write more


shoot more points

yeah, the nerve of american stations primarily covering the americans!!

The olympics would be a lot better if they removed all the nationalistic garbage and just had people come compete.