The Olympics, or What is an American to do?

Those who know me are aware that I am not a fan of the Olympic games. I think they peaked with the Cold War battles between the US and Soviet athletes. Now, we make up rivalries between the Australian and American swim team, or turn to the women's gymnastics team to foster memories of Mary Lou Retton. And, I might add, the games have become huge money makers and are far more about the money than any sense of global unity or peace. Perhaps that has been true for a while, I don't know.

So, despite my opposition, I actually sat down and watched a little of the games. With the variety of channels, we have been trying to catch things like Olympic badmitton (????) or Table Tennis. I actually started cheering for the women's sand vollyball team, well, maybe for different reasons. I have to concede there are some great stories at the games. Martina Navratalova playing at 47 is kind of cool. And I know there are great stories of people who work their asses off at other jobs while they train for a sport that only seem to count at these games. So, those are cool.

But the stories that dominate the games? Michael Phelps and the so-called "Dream Team" men's basketball. Phelps is a swimming freak and was hoping to win a new record for individual medals. As is the norm, we had to suffer through the human interest stories about these athletes and so learned a little more about Phelps, the swim freak. Turns out he seems like a teenage jerk, who's big lesson from international competition has been that when he breaks a world record, he gets to buy something extravagant, like a "tricked out" Cadillac Escalade. No sense of global responsibility here. But, to be fair, he may have actually learned the lesson of the modern Olympic games--money rules!

And then we have the men's basketball team. Beaten to a pulp by Puerto Rico. And this was not a new trend. Beaten in preliminary play by Italy, and needing a miracle shot to beat a German team that didn't even qualify for the Olympics--we were not terribly surprised to see them lose to Puerto Rico. And yes, the team doesn't have its best playing, blah, blah, blah. But count me among one of the observers who are tired of the "Dream Team" crap. Kind of glad they lost. Maybe they will learn a little humilty--that used to be one of the things you were supposed to learn in sports.