Olympics 2012 Diary: Inspiration

We have hit that point in the Olympics where things are not as crazy and exciting.  Instead of spending the last two nights glued to NBC's DVR rebroadcast, I have actually been catching up on some shows on our own DVR.  Sure, there are some cool things here an there.  But once swimming, gymnastics, and the signature track events are over, things slow down considerably.  We still have a lot of team based finales coming up (basketball, volleyball - court and beach, soccer, water polo).  My interest definitely wanes, though.

So what would you say has been the most incredible performance in these Olympics?  As far as a career culmination, most people would point to Michael Phelps.  Usain Bolt's mind-blowing 9.62 in the 100 meters was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.  Mckayla Maroney's vault in the team finals was jaw-dropping - as evidenced by the classic pictures of the judges doing just that.  There were several swimming events that broke records.  Kevin Durant rained three pointers on Argentina like it was a pickup game.  And Jessica Ennis obliterated the field in the heptathlon.  But for me the answer is simple.

Take a minute and look at that picture.  It almost looks Photoshopped.  It looks like someone was erasing the bottom and accidentally removed the guy's legs.  Except it isn't like that at all.  This is Oscar Pistorius, sprinter from South Africa. He was born without tibias in his lower legs, so the doctors amputated his legs when he was eleven months old.  Now, an inspirational story would be that the child learned to walk on artificial limbs and lived a relatively normal life.  That would be an incredible performance.  But, Oscar wasn't content with that and neither was his family.  Instead, he worked really hard and became a sprinter on his artificial Cheetah blades.

Now, his talent for sprinting is indeed great.  He has represented South Africa in the Paralympic Games.  And he has routinely destroyed the competition because he is ridiculously fast.  This would be an incredible performance.  But that wasn't something to be contented with, either.  Oscar is fast enough that his top speeds are comparable to the "able-bodied" athletes in the Olympics.  So he pursued that goal as well.  If someone can qualify for the Olympics and they are following the rules, they should be allowed to compete.

This is where Oscar's story gets strange.  He was banned from the Games because the authorities ruled his limbs gave him a competitive advantage.  To this day, there are people who say he should not be there because he is using attachments to his body to compete.  US track legend, Michael Johnson, is one of the detractors.  Now this is where I take pause in this whole story.

My favorite sports columnist, Bill Simmons, has proposed several times that all sports teams and sports ruling bodies should be forced to hire a "VP of Common Sense."  This would be a non-sports related individual that had to make a final approval on all trades, roster moves, and rule changes.  This would be someone like you and me, someone far enough from the situation to think clearly.  A BS detector, if you will.  There have been many times in the sports world where a decision was made where we, the fans, have said, "Who came up with that?  If I ran my business that way, I would go broke."  This is where the VP of Common Sense comes in.

I wish that there had been a VP of Common Sense when this original ruling came down on Pistorius.  I mean, even the announcers at the Olympics - who are not generally considered insightful by any stretch of the imagination - just can't get over how ludicrous this entire train of thought is.  You know this.  I know this.  It is nonsense.  The man does not have legs.  Everyone else does.  What possible steps could be taken - short of mounting him on jetpacks, rockets, or actual cheetahs - could ever made THAT equal, let alone give him an advantage?  Think about this for just a minute.  HE DOESN'T HAVE FEET.  I'm not being crass here.  I just want that to sink in.  Think about all the things you need feet for in your life.  True, most of us are stuck in a sitting position for most of the day and could manage just fine without feet.  But getting up, walking to find a donut in the break room, standing up to pee, driving.  Things get complicated.  Average, boring, menial things get complicated.  But running at an Olympic speed?  In the words of Gus on Psych, "Son, puh-leeze."

I would have overruled them.  I would have said, "Think about it, jack wagon. How could you possibly justify this stance?"  Even with this setback, Pistorius kept training and challenged their ruling. He got a team of experts to testify in his favor.  I read the summaries of the reports by this team.  They couldn't even agree with each other about why the ruling was wrong - but they all said it was wrong.  One of them said that the artificial legs DID give him an advantage when it came to moving his legs faster because the lack of bones made them lighter, meaning they could go faster.  One of them said that the blades gave him a higher rate of return on the leg muscles effort, but a grossly inferior rate of return from the foot itself pushing onto the track.  Supposedly a human foot will return over 200 percent of the force pushed down in a race.  The blade only returned 90 percent.  The final expert - who has artificial legs with robotic elements - said the other guys were all completely daft and none of what they said was true.  His report was more along the line of what I have said.  "You guys are seriously stupid.  Just think for a second what you are saying."

So Pistorius was cleared to compete.  He was named to the South African team for the 400 meter sprint and the 4x400 relay.  On Saturday, as soon as I woke up, I fired up NBCOlympics.com and watched the replay of his qualifying race.  They ran it in the evening as well, with the commentators.  It was bizarre.  This was really the first that anyone had mentioned Pistorius on the NBC coverage.  They were so busy mooning over Phelps and Lochte and Gabby Douglas.  The track team of Tom Hammon and Ato Boldin are usually very good.  But this time, it was almost like they were condescending.  It was like it was a curiosity.  "He isn't expected to do much, but it means so much he is even here."  Now, the crowd in London didn't quite feel the same.  They gave him such a rousing ovation for just standing there, you would have thought he was British.  You could tell he was extremely moved at the reality of the race finally happening.

The gun went off and so did Pistorius.  The announcers were stunned to see that he wasn't loafing in the back.  Instead, he was up near the front.  In fact, he finished his heat second, behind eventual silver medalist, Luguelin Santos, in a time of 45.44 seconds.  Wrap your mind around that.  I am always amazed at how fast the sprinters in the Olympics can run.  I swear, Usain Bolt is just a blur of limbs as his lopes down the track.  But Oscar Pistorius is not your average sprinter.  He shouldn't be able to run that fast.  The story took off, and NBC finally got a clue.  They ran the pre-Games interview between Mary Carillo and Oscar.  He was on the Today Show.  There was a lot of build-up to his semifinal race.

I was rooting for him to win.  But, he came in eighth.  It wats apparent, though, that no one in the stadium thought that was a loss.  This included his fellow competitors.  In a great picture, the eventual gold medalist, Kirani James of Grenada (who just seems like a really cool guy), came up and wanted to switch name bibs with Pistorius in a show of sportsmanship.  You could tell the other guys were deeply respectful.  Oscar didn't just show up - he raced and competed and held his own.  It was incredible to watch, and my most amazing performance of the Games.

It also got me thinking.  Pistorius has had to do so much work to get where he has gotten.  He has trained himself daily to get into the shape necessary to be a competitor on any stage.  But he also has had to fight in the courts to get the right to compete where he has every right to be - the biggest stage.  He has had to listen to people who have held up his biggest disadvantage and dared to say it gave him an unfair advantage.  In one way they are right.  It isn't the blades that gives him an advantage.  It is the commitment to overcome the hand he was dealt.  It is the lifetime of struggling and fighting and overcoming that no person with full use of their limbs can ever know.  He does have an unfair advantage - but it isn't from science or technology.  He had every excuse to NOT do this.  Most of us wouldn't excuse someone like Ryan Lochte or Missy Franklin for quitting the pursuit of gold.  It is all consuming and exhausting, more than any person should have to go through if they don't want to.  So no one in their right mind would blame Pistorius for quitting at any point in the process.

Most of us are content to let greatness pass us by.  We aren't committed to see it through.  It just becomes too much work.  I have loved the Nike ads narrated by Tom Hardy through these Olympics, reminding us that greatness is not something born into people.  It is discovered and worked toward.  To say it is born diminishes just how great greatness is.  Sure, someone like Michael Phelps or Missy Franklin or Lebron James may have the genetic package to succeed in their selected sports.  But that doesn't guarantee anything.  Just go look on any playground basketball court in New York City and you'll find dozens of players that had the genetic package to make the NBA.  But some combination of events and choices led them away.

I struggle with this.  I know that I have talents - great talents in some areas.  I am not being a braggart by saying that.  I have a lifetime of trophies and accolades and awards to back this up.  To claim that I don't have talent actually minimizes the gifts that God gave me.  But I am so afraid.  I can be so lazy.  So I just don't follow through.  I love writing.  It is something that is not an effort for me.  My life has happened in such a way that I was prepared to be a writer.  The three hardest teachers I ever had were 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English.  They honed my skills.  But everyone thinks they can be a writer.  That is why there are fifty gazillion blogs out there.  And it is easy to not follow through on something that I want to do out of fear that I won't succeed, or that I am fooling myself.  I have wanted to write a book for so long.  This isn't just a dream that I came up with yesterday.  I have a folder on my computer with book ideas - complete with thumbnails, chapters, intros.  One series I thought up has the floor plan for seven entire books.  They are just sitting there.

When I see someone like Oscar Pistorius, the thought that comes is, "So, what's your excuse?"  Trust me, I have many.  And I usually ignore that question.  It is too uncomfortable.  I have dozens of reasons why I don't do something.  People may not like it.  No one will read it.  Maybe I'm not actually that good.  Maybe I'm actually not that funny.  What about money?  How will I print it?  No publisher will ever buy it.  What about time?  With all the other stuff I am doing or need to be doing, how will I have time to write something that isn't guaranteed to even be bought or read or anything?  The voices of doubt are so loud in my head that I can't even move.  It is frustrating.  And I have a feeling that I am not alone in those thoughts.  I want to move past that fear and paralysis to actually DO something.

I have heard people ask, "What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?"  That isn't a great question, I have realized.  There is never a guarantee we won't fail.  And to only do something if we know we won't fail, well then we don't want to do that thing enough.  Pistorius didn't know he wouldn't fail.  There was no guarantee ever for him. We need to ask, "What is it you want to do, even if you might fail?'  Jumping into something because you believe in it and are committed to it, even if the cards are stacked against you is so much better.  That is when greatness happens.  That is something Olympic athletes have realized.  That is something that Oscar Pistorius lives by.  And that is something I hope I can learn too.

Olympics 2012 Diary: Week One

And before I realized it, the first week of the Olympics were over.  I have failed again in keeping up with a regular diary.  If I was an Olympian, I would have been one of those guys who bombed out in the first qualifying heat.  The one who looked like he was doggie paddling in a freestyle race.  It would have been pathetic.  I'm glad my failure was more private and relegated to my recliner.

It has been an exciting first week.  The Olympics never fails in delivering the goods. There has been more than a fair share of controversy (a lot of it involving NBC), but nothing outrageous like a steroid discovery in a major event ala Ben Johnson.  All in all, I have enjoyed the many many hours I have spent watching people doing things I could not do in my wildest dreams.  While I had intended to be more prolific with my entries, I will have to settle for a recap of some major story lines.

NBC -  It almost seems unfair at this point to take shots at NBC.  They have made a TON of errors in their coverage of these games.  It almost is as embarrassing as the 2000 Sydney Games. One of my friends, Stuart, posted a funny tweet that just about summed up the complaints.  "It is nice of NBC to share their DVR with the world."  I've taken my shots at the coverage as well.  Tape delaying the games for sometimes twelve or eighteen hours is ridiculous.  Packaging and editing to only focus on Americans or to raise tension is obnoxious.  And their dumbo move of running a promo for their own show that spoiled a race outcome was inexcusable.  But I am going to take a different track this time.

-  I read a great post the other day that asked if we were to run NBC, would we do anything different?  He wasn't asking us as fans, but us as businessmen.  NBC paid a huge amount of money for the right to broadcast this event and needs to make their money back.  They need to get eyeballs on the screen.  What exactly could be changed?  It was a good point.  I couldn't answer.  Brings a different perspective.

-  The ratings are not showing a lack of happiness.  If it were offensive enough, wouldn't millions of people abandon the shows?  Instead, they are thrashing everyone.

-  There is a massive amount of coverage available.  I have been stunned to see it.  It's a shame that the live stuff that runs all day is the heats and qualifiers.  But there is a LOT of live coverage on the television.  NBC shows Olympic coverage on the main station from 9am to 5pm.  Then they air again from 8pm to 12am and 1230am to 3am.  In addition to that, their is almost non-stop coverage on CNBC, MSNBC, NBC Sports Network, and Bravo.  There also is an entire station dedicated to Soccer and another to Basketball.  If that isn't enough, EVERYTHING is available online live and can be viewed after on replay.  That is a mind-numbing amount of coverage.  I have seen every sport that has run at some point. That is admirable.

That all being said, there have been some moments that were very frustrating.  If you are going to delay coverage until 8pm, that's fine.  But then waiting to show gymnastics until 9:30pm or 10pm? Ridiculous.  My daughter wasn't able to watch any gymnastics "live" because she can't stay up that lated.  On the topic of gymnastics, I hated that they didn't show a single rings routine in the men's gymnastics team or all-around competition.  How do you leave out an entire apparatus?  Also, NBC had concocted a massive amount of coverage for John Orozco.  The second he fell off the horse, it was like he didn't exist any more.  They didn't reference him or show him again.  Pitiful.  They started to to the same thing to Aly Reisman in the women's all-around before she clawed back into the medal chase.  Even still, she didn't get a third the coverage of Gabby Douglas.  Jonathan Frakes (Cmdr Riker from Star Trek) tweeted that NBC was very jingoistic in their packaging of sports.  I agree.  If an American wasn't in an event or a final, it didn't happen.  That is annoying, because there are some great foreign athletes with stories just as moving, or more so, that the American reps.  The first female athletes from several Muslim countries?  That is huge.  But they weren't even acknowledged in the Opening Ceremony.  There are teams from countries in turmoil - Tunisia, Egypt, North Korea - what about what it takes for them to get to London?  I am always intrigued when there is an athlete from a non-traditional team in an event final.  What is their story? Good luck finding out on NBC.

There have obviously been some major issues, but some of them stem from things that I don't really know how ANYONE would figure them out.

TWITTER - This is one of those things.  I mentioned the 2000 Sydney Games.  That was the first Olympics that really had to deal with problem of the Internet.  NBC didn't have any clue how to address the fact that people could find out every result twelve hours before they aired.  This year, the problem is Twitter.  This is the first Olympics that had to deal with the obsession with instantaneous information.  The first day of competition, people everywhere were tweeting results.  You had athletes and fans in London, people watching the live feeds on NBCLive, sportscasters from around the world all putting results on their twitter accounts.  And no one was really prepared for that.  My wife and I both got burned independently of each other with a twitter update from someone we follow.  Honestly, I don't know if people would have been so angry with NBC if Twitter wasn't compounding the problem. It didn't take long before we realized we just had to avoid Twitter (and Facebook) on days that we wanted to not know results before the prime time showings.  It is awesome to see the comments from people actually over there.  But, at the same time, the spoilers have been very annoying.  Even today, when gymnastics spoilers were over, I had several swimming events ruined by people I never would have expected to say something.  

DUMB RULES -  Answer me this: Why is it that only two people from a country can compete in the gymnastics individual all-around finals?  No clue?  It isn't consistent, either.  There can be three representatives from a country in the track and field finals.  The US has swept events before.  So why is the rule two in some events and three in others?  It is one thing when you can only BRING two or three athletes in an event.  But why put a cap part way through a competition?  It was ridiculous that Jordyn Wieber wasn't allowed to compete in the all-around.  She finished fourth in the competition and sat home in the all-around.  The same thing happened to another American in an event final.  And I heard today that it happened in another sport.  There is no good reason.  Now, if that all got you irritated, wait until someone gets tossed on the "no mercy" false start rule in sprinting.

STILL HARD TO BEAT SWIMMING - For pure excitement and action, it hard to beat swimming. The races are usually short.  They have a lot going on.  And they are gorgeous on television.  With all the technological innovations, it has gotten even better.  We know who is in each lane.  We get camera angles that make it so exciting.  And the announcers are the best in any event, in my opinion.  The stories are good.  The hidden politics and rivalries are even fun.  And I love to see rising stars emerge that will be involved in several Olympics.  We saw Michael Phelps in Sydney as a precocious teenager.  This year, we met Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky - who will be back in Rio and wherever 2020 lands.  Very enjoyable sport.

PEOPLE NEED TO LIGHTEN UP -  This sound weird coming from a person who blogs and tweets and has a highly developed sense of snark.  But it is true.  One thing that is definitely true about America is that we are ultra-sensitive about anything.  If the events of the past week has shown us anything, it is that Americans can get all worked up about everything.  The thing we don't realize is that not every country in the world is that hyper-sensitive.  Not every country shares our beliefs, our views, or our paranoia.  And we also need to realize that not everything that is said and done is meant as an offense.  When a commercial with a monkey doing gymnastics airs right after Gabby Douglas wins the gold medal, it was not intended as a racist comment.  That commercial had run several times before.  It was part of a huge marketing campaign for NBC's new show Animal Practice.  There also was one of a dog swimming right after Michael Phelps missed the medal in his first race.  That wasn't a comment about him, either.  Gabby Douglas' hairdo isn't worth getting all worked up about, and neither is Serena Williams' hairdo.  When Lolo Jones tweets, wondering when the gun competitions are after the US lost the archery event in heartbreaking fashion, she is not saying she endorses gun violence.  She was saying that we are better at gun events - something that has been proven by our medal victories in them.  When a swimmer comments that Michael Phelps hasn't trained as hard this Olympics, it wasn't "calling him out" or minimizing his talents.  Phelps himself admitted as much.  If a Chinese swimmer puts up a ludicrously fast time, it does not automatically mean she is doping (as NBC went out of the way to claim they were not saying, but by claiming to not say it they were saying it).  And if an underwater camera accidentally catches one player pulling the suit down on another player in a water polo match, it is not the modern equivalent of the Janet Jackson halftime show.  I am a very conservative person.  But I also feel I am a reasonable person.  Let's work a little harder in the second week to lighten up a wee bit.

WHY THE OLYMPICS RULE - Lots of people wonder why the Olympics is so popular.  I have wondered that.  Some of it is the novelty of it.  We don't have to be invested in the process week in and week out like other sports.  We root for things based on our country, which just seems natural.  All the corporate ugliness that sullies so many sports seems to melt away.  Even mega-millionaires take the Olympics seriously.  But I think the real draw of the Olympics comes from the fact that MOST of the sports are very relatable.  Swimming?  I do that.  Running?  When someone with a weapon is chasing me, I do that.  Jumping, throwing stuff, picking things up.  I do those things.  It seems like those sports are the ones that are the most popular.  The simpler it is to put on the event, the more popular it seems to be.  Running is huge.  Swimming is mammoth.  Flipping around on a mat is easy to stage.  So it putting up a volleyball net and hoisting a basketball hoop.  Table tennis, badminton, tennis, soccer.  These are not foreign concepts.  You could argue that shooting guns and arrows, martial arts, boating, and horse riding are some of the older skills in the world.  We can all relate to these things.  Now, it may be true that I can't relate to the rifle events, where the people have Robocop-like attachments all over their body.  But the thought of shooting a gun is not that hard to grasp.  And I think that is what makes the Olympics so powerful, as well.  I can run (sort of).  So when I see someone running down the track so fast that they barely look human, I can really appreciate that.  I swim across our pool, kind of like a whale moving slowly along.  The fact that there are people that can swim 50 meters in 25 seconds is something I can grasp as being freaking ridiculous.  That feeling is worldwide.  I'm actually glad that they have gotten rid of some events, like baseball and softball.  The more accessible the event, the better chance it will rock out in the Olympics.

Olympics 2012 Diary: Excitement

I love the Olympics.  It is hands down my favorite sporting event - even more than the Super Bowl that I have lovingly blathered on about before on this blog.  Look! I even debuted a new identifier disc to reflect my Olympic spirit!  I'm not some naive doofus that buys into all of that Olympic purity and honor and integrity garbage.  I know that this is big business and that athletes will do anything they can to get ahead.  I would not be surprised to find that even some of my very favorite athletes may have so many drugs in their system they could be considered a pharmacy.  Plus the belief that the Olympics somehow bring peace to this world is a joke.  That has been shown time and again at the Games.  People are still people, countries are still countries.  No torch is going to change that.

Yet, even in my cynical approach to sports, I still have a soft spot for the Olympics.  I believe some of that was forged in my childhood, when we all sat down together and watched the Olympics non-stop.  My parents loved them too - even my mother, who usually was as ambivalent to sports as a person could get.  (Except John Elway.  For some reason, which I never understood, she loved John Elway.)  Anything that caused that to happen in our house was going to get my stamp of approval.  I'm sure it didn't hurt that my first major Olympic memory was the 1984 Los Angeles games when we won everything due to the Communist boycott.

You know how you may have a restaurant you really like, but you only get to go once a year or maybe every other year?  Maybe its a place you go on vacation, so it is REALLY special?  It could be that if you were able to go to that restaurant all the time, it wouldn't be that special anymore.  I think that also has something to do with my draw to the Olympics.  The sports that make up the Olympic roster are ones that I really enjoy AND don't get to see that often.  You aren't saturated with the non-stop presence of them, unlike football or baseball.  So they remain special.  I love watching swimming, diving, gymnastics, track and field, volleyball, and rowing.  I don't know if I would watch those sports if they were on all the time, but I like watching them every four years.  The same goes for the winter games.  Bobsledding, skiing, figure skating, speed skating.  Those are fun things to enjoy, partly because they are rare.  Even the more accessible sports - tennis, soccer, basketball - find a new meaning in the Olympics.  I barely watched any basketball this past season - NBA or NCAA.  But I will watch Olympic basketball.

One final reason I have loved the Summer Olympics is that they usually fall during the summer.  (That may seem obvious, but we have also had games that ran during September, which is just stupid.)  As a student, that timing is perfect.  You are off from school, usually having trouble filling the time.  Out of nowhere, BAM, non-stop Olympics.  It is awesome.  Just about any time of day, you can find some kind of Olympics on tv.  Now, with all the iPhone apps and web coverage, a person could watch coverage all day.  [NOTE: Some of this coverage is boxing.  I hate boxing.  I used to watch it as a kid.  That was before two things happened.  First, the USA started to suck at boxing.  That makes it less fun to watch.  Second, I realized that boxing is a disgusting sport.  So CNBC is basically a useless station.]

As you can see, I love the Olympics.  Here are the ten things I am most excited to see during this Olympics.  (Spoiler alert - not all of them have to do with sports.)

1. Opening Ceremony - I know this happened last night.  All day, I was excited for it to start.  I actually was counting down the hours.  Personally, I loved the London opening.  I heard a lot of people say it wasn't as good as Beijing.  For some reason, I don't remember much about theirs.  But I thought London did a GREAT job.  Maybe I just appreciated the story-telling.   It was brilliant how they transformed the stadium like they did.  The rising smokestacks were very cool. And the forging elements, complete with the map of London on the floor of the stadium, were just incredible.  Their tributes to literature and music were fun - even though their exclusion of Coldplay, Adele, and U2 (YES I KNOW THEY AREN'T PART OF THE UK!!! But they are on the same islands, for pete's sake) was annoying.  I thought the parade of nations was great.  It was much faster than usual and the background music (which did include Adele and U2, but not Coldplay or Mumford and Sons) was super.  My favorite was the lighting of the torch.  I thought the incorporation of every country in the creation of the giant torch was brilliant - and it mimicked the storyline of building and forging.  I loved it.  Well worth the wait.
2. Oscar Pistorius Running - For those of you who don't know who that is, he is a sprinter from South Africa.  I've actually been following his story since the beginning.  The dude is fast - one of the fastest sprinters in South Africa.  But he has been refused inclusion for two straight Olympics.  Actually, he has competed . . . in the Paralympics.  He had both of his legs partially amputated as a child.  So he runs with these bladed appendages.  There has been a big fight over if he can compete because his artificial legs gave him an advantage.  US legend Michael Johnson even went on record saying he thought Pistorius shouldn't be allowed.  My thought is HE HAS NO LEGS!!!! What kind of advantage can POSSIBLY make up for having NO LEGS?!?!  He isn't going to win.  But I want to see him finally run in the Olympics.  What an amazing story.
3. Men's 100 Meter Finals - Talk about running!  This is stacking up to be the most incredible 100 meters race I can remember.  You have Usain Bolt, who has looked like he is running on fast forward for years.  But he has lost to his own countryman several times this year, including the qualifiers.  Plus, there is the gaggle of US sprinters and several others.  Just how fast can a man run?  I remember when Ben Johnson ran the 9.78 100 meter with the steroid needle hanging out of his butt.  I thought that we probably had hit the point where it was impossible to run any faster.  Bolt ran a 9.58 in Beijing.  What will happen in a field THIS competitive?  Will they run so fast they break out of their Matrix slumber?  (That was for the three of you who saw that short story on Animatrix.)
4. London - One of the alternating best and most annoying things about NBC's coverage of the Olympics is the human interest stories.  Sure, we hardly ever get to see these sports, so let's cut away to see Mary Carillo talking to some Ethiopian athlete's third grade teacher.  But I do love the insight into the host country.  Combine that with the fact that London is my ultimate dream vacation spot.  I love London - like an illogical love of London.  I've never been there.  But I would rather visit there than New York City, Hawaii, the Caribbean.  I've been to Washington DC, Los Angeles, Montreal, Sydney, Philadelphia, and Dallas.  But none of them were as high on my list as London.  I love history, I love Shakespeare, I love several UK bands (I KNOW U2 ISN'T FROM THE UK!!!), I love Harry Potter, I love Sherlock Holmes.  There is so much from London that I love.  At one point, Heather and I had discussed going to London for these Olympics - before Med School made that impossible.  I think I would have exploded.
5. Women's Gymnastics - I have always loved gymnastics.  They are fun to watch.  The fact that my wife is a major gymnastics fan, which she passed on to our daughter only serves to intensify my love for the sport.  If you don't believe that we are that attached to this sport, think of this.  We went to the Women's Gymnastics Olympic Trials in 2000 on our honeymoon.  That's important.  
6. Michael Phelps - I like Phelps.  I know he can be arrogant and make bad decisions.  But he is an awesome swimmer.  I want to see him become the most decorated Olympian of all time.  Plus, the drama from swimming is unmatchable.  I still can't believe Phelps won that one match in Beijing.  You know the one I'm talking about.  (That's another great thing about the Olympics.)
7. Ryan Seacrest - One thing I noticed last night is that his hair looks like he has completely replicated Bruno Mars' pompadour.  At what point does this guy have to clone himself to do all of his jobs?  I'm excited for that.  Cloning yourself never ends well in movies.  What kind of evil could multiple Ryan Seacrests propagate?  I'm on board to find out.
8. Basketball  - I have generally abandoned the NBA.  But even I have to admit that it is stinking cool to see our all-star team playing together like you do in the Olympics.  I also get a kick out of seeing NBA players playing for other countries - like the Gasol brothers in Spain and Ronnie Turiaf for France.  It will be fun to watch.
9. NBC Olympics LIVE - With each Olympics, NBC learns a little better how to handle the new technology.  I remember the 2000 Sydney Olympics, when Heather and I would get online to find all the gymnastics scores twelve hours before they were broadcast.  NBC has been under fire for years about delaying sports until prime time.  BUT, this year you can watch just about everything live.  They have a website and an iPhone/iPad app where you can watch any sport as they are happening.  Plus, they have sports running all day on NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, and three different NBC Sports channels.  It is almost overwhelming.  Do I want to watch cycling, fencing, tennis, soccer, handball, boxing (not boxing), or beach volleyball?  Or do I go online and watch something I've never seen before?  
10. Tennis - The tennis matches are at Wimbledon.  Do you realize how cool that is?!?  Wimbledon only happens once a year and is just incredible to watch.  I have always loved Wimbledon.  It is another one of those special events, made more special by their limited access.  BUT, for one time only, we get to see it TWICE in a year.  Awesome.  Plus, all of the big name tennis stars are playing - but for their own country and not just themselves.  That is one thing I do like with the professionals being involved.  These stars make tens of millions of dollars a year.  But there still is something special enough involved in playing for their country that they will give up their offseason to play.  Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams, the basketball men and women.  It is cool to see them so invested in something like a gold medal that brings no financial gain.  

I hope to be writing a few of these articles as the Olympics go on.  So just look for the fancy new Olympics identifier disc at the top.  

Can the Olympics Survive?

The Winter Olympics are in their second week up there in Vancouver, which is Canadian for "So Much Prettier Than Where You Live."  There have been some great stories and performances so far.  We have Ohno becoming the all-time winningest US Winter Olympic athlete.  We've seen the redemption of Bode Miller.  There's been some beautiful figure skating, some unbelievable aerial tricks, and tons of speed.  But, there is still something that really gives me a bad feeling about the fate of the Olympic Games.

If you read anything about the Olympics, it is going to be tainted by some of the negative things that have happened in Vancouver.  There was the luger who died during practice on an unsafe course.  There were the environmentally safe zambonis that ruined the speed skating short track.  Then there was the snow melting on the mountains, making skiing nearly impossible.  And, of course, there is NBC's coverage of the Games.  It has been labeled as everything from horrific to pointless to irritating.  When you combine all of this, and a few other points, there is a real legitimate concern for the Games' long-term success.

INSTANTANEOUS NEWS
Suspense is dead.  I remember back in 1984.  We had the Sarajevo Winter Olympics and the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.  To me, that was when America hit a whole new level of obsession with the games.  Lake Placid had hosted the 1980 Winter games, with such amazing moments as the "Miracle on Ice" hockey victory over the Soviet Union.  We boycotted the 1980 Games, which made us extra-hungry for the 1984 Games on our home turf.  The Soviet boycott just helped America to win everything - which made it even better.  We had the Mahre brothers, Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano, Katarina Witt, The Carruthers, and Torvill and Dean in Sarajevo.  Then there was Carl Lewis, the Gymnastics teams, Greg Louganis, and the swimming team in Los Angeles.  But, the only way to know anything was to watch television.  I remember spending every day in front of the tv with my family - watching everything and anything.  1988 was in Seoul and Calgary.  Calgary was still close, so there was some interest.  But Seoul was hours away, so all the great events were on LATE at night.  I remember staying up until after midnight to watch Ben Johnson's roid fueled destruction of the 100 meter record.  As a result, we had a lot of tape-delayed sports.  Things would get played early in the morning and shown at night.  It worked pretty well, since there wasn't a lot of options.  And the other stations played nice, telling you to not watch when they announced results.

1992, the Winter hit France and the Summer was in Barcelona.  Both games seemed underplayed here.  There were some moments like The Dream Team in basketball, Bonnie Blair and Kristi Yamaguchi.  But the US didn't do as well in either one.  The Winter Games switched off of the Summer Games years in 1994 - being played in Lillehammer.  You had Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya Harding and Dan Jansen.  Mostly, though, the US didn't perform up to par again.  1996 had Atlanta - which we ate up, since it was in America again.  But, this was the last Games to really operate under the old media rules.  Starting with the 1998 Nagano Games, and really emphasized with the 2000 Sydney Games, the new media rules began to play.  We didn't have to watch the Games.  We could go on the Internet and find out results.  That meant that tape-delayed sports just didn't cut it.  I remember Heather going online to see all the gymnastics results from Sydney - almost ten hours before they aired.  No one knew how to handle this.  ESPN had become a behemoth by this point, also.  So they had their tickers running with constant updates.  There were never live sports shown.  A 13 hour time difference killed that possibility.  The Nagano Games were almost in a shroud of secrecy - a huge time difference and a disappearing US presence.  The biggest things from that event were the rowdy and disgusting behaviors of the US Hockey team and the Lipinski/Kwan figure skating battle.

The tape-delayed method that was set in stone by NBC was not suited for a world where you could get instant news.  The 2002 Salt Lake City games was helped by being on US soil, so there wasn't much tape delaying, although there was some.  But it was also marred by the massive scandals that plagued it - from bribes to get the Games there to screwing the Canadian figure skaters out of a medal.  2004 the Summer Games went to Athens - which may have been the worst coverage ever.  Tape delaying was so bad.  2006 in Turin and 2008 in Beijing also had to deal with long distance coverage, and the horrible tape delays.  It meant you knew everything way before it ever aired.  Shoot, you may have already SEEN the coverage before it aired.  I remember some of Usain Bolt's insane performances being on the Internet before they were on tv.  So, how did NBC decide to deal with the fact they were getting scooped constantly by their own internet arms?

OVERLY DRAMATIC
They went for the human interest stories.  If they couldn't build suspense with the events, due to everyone knowing the outcomes, then they would drum up interest by making the athletes' stories more prominent.  It had been successful in some of the Games in the 80s, so NBC decided to beat it into the ground.  So, now, whenever you watch the Olympics at night, you see a few minutes of taped action from earlier in the day (which you already knew about).  Then you get a story about some athlete who overcame huge obstacles to be here (that's all of them).  Then there are a few live shots, maybe a medal presentation.  Then there's some story about Vancouver (or China or Italy).  Then a few more minutes of taped coverage.  Then another story.  It isn't sports coverage.  It is trying to make everything into a sports movie.

This has driven true sports fans away from NBC's coverage into the MSNBC, USA, and CNBC realms, where they just show live events.  This could explain the shooting popularity in curling, hockey, and the sledding track events.  They are shown in their entirety without listening to Bob Costas or Mary Carillo or Al Michaels.  You just get to watch a game as it unfolds - often live.  The drama is nice, but it builds too much reliance on the specific chosen athletes to make the Games a success.  I remember with Bode Miller, he was played up so much in Turin, that when he didn't medal it made the whole Games seem like it did poorly.  This leads to the next problem.

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
As Americans, we want to be the best in everything.  If we aren't the best, we will throw money at the situation until we are.  If that doesn't work, we just quit worrying about it.  This is why men's tennis is a non-entity in America.  We don't have the best players in the world, or anyone close, so we just stopped caring.  The same thing is true about soccer.  It is part of the arrogant American approach to life that has been ingrained in us almost since we became a country.

That means that we need to win every Olympics.  We want to be the top medal country.  We aren't content to win the overall, either.  We want to win the most in each event.  We want winners in every sport.  If we don't win certain sports ever, we don't cover them either.  Have you noticed how little play ski jumping gets now that America routinely finishes last?  It gets buried in coverage.  We also will try to change the rules to make sure we can win.  Look at basketball, hockey, soccer, baseball, golf.  We now have our professional athletes go to make sure we win.  We hate losing.  America doesn't lose.  And if we are counting on an athlete to win, to carry our coverage, they had better not lose either.

Here's how ridiculous it is.  Lindsey Vonn is one of the greatest female skiers ever.  But she had a "disappointing Games" by most commentators.  What was her crime?  She only won two medals.  She fell in one event, so she didn't get three medals.  Bode Miller has always been seen as a failure because he had never won a gold medal.  We've never won ice dancing medals.  But last Olympics, Belbin and Agosto won a silver.  So this year?  Well, naturally, they had to win.  They came in fourth - what a horrible job!  At least the other US team managed to get a silver.  It is like a dad who has a kid come home with all A's and a B in Med School and asks what happened with the B.

These athletes are expected to do ridiculous things.  Don't just get TO the Olympics.  You HAVE to win.  If you come in fourth, you failed.  Vonn was racing with a shin that was so hurt it would have put normal people on crutches.  But she is a failure because she didn't get three medals.  Someone wrote that if she hadn't spent so much time modeling and doing appearances, then she probably would have won.  What?!?  How are those even related?  She did modeling in December, so that's why she bruised her shin or fell on the slope?  That's just stupid.  But that is how we treat our athletes.  If you win, we will throw money at you and turn you into a demigod.  If you lose, you get booted to the curb.

MONEY MONEY MONEY
The Olympics is a big money item.  But, NBC has already told everyone that will listen that they are losing money.  It is highly likely that they will not try to win the next Games up for bid - the 2014/2016 Games.  I read something the other day that talked about how ESPN/ABC would probably try to grab the Games.  Or Fox will sneak in like they did with the BCS Games a few years back.  What will happen if the Games go to ESPN?  There are still a large number of people in America - and worldwide - that don't get cable.  Will they use ABC as the "human interest outlet" like NBC is now?  ESPN has the resources to give a ton of coverage.  They have ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPN U, ABC, ABC Family, Disney, Disney XD - and the new ESPN 3D channel that is coming.  Add in the ESPN 360 web outlet and the ESPN pay per view channels.  Let's just say the coverage could improve.  But how do you deal with the tape delay?  No matter how many channels you have, there still is going to be the problem of the marquee events (women's figure skating and gymnastics, 100 meter race, finals in team sports) being played at other times.

The 2012 London Games will only have a five hour difference from Eastern US time, not much worse than the three hours from the West Coast.  But NBC has already said they are going to keep using tape delays.  2014 will be in Russia.  And then 2016 is in Rio - which is in virtually the same time zone as the US.  (So we'll be able to watch people get kidnapped and murdered live.  Just kidding.)  The Rio games highlighted another disturbing trend.  It is ugly just how much money is getting thrown at even getting the Games.  The proposals costs to be considered as a finalist is ridiculous.  Once you are a finalist, you basically have to start preparing as if you won the Games just to get considered.  If you lose, all that  money is down the drain.  The 2012 battle was ugly.  Florida was in the early running, but it didn't stand a chance against New York.  The final battle of New York, London, Moscow, Madrid, and Paris was like a Battle of the Titans.  The Olympics, though, want so much.  The Games have become such a huge deal that they require an unbelievable amount of work.

For the last few Olympics, the host cities had to built multiple stadiums.  Just look at the price tags of some of the new stadiums in America.  Cowboys Stadium in Dallas was $1.2 billion.  The new Jets/Giants stadium in New Jersey was $1 billion.  A billion dollars for a stadium?!?  Even the new Orlando Magic arena will be $500 million - for a small market team.  So how much would it cost to build an Olympic stadium, swim facility, basketball stadium, Olympic village, in addition to all the smaller facilities.  London is renovating some sites, but they also have to build a lot of stuff (not as much as Athens, who barely could complete the job).  But that's not it.  London is building a high speed rail for the Games.  Sydney had to develop an entirely new area of town, complete with multiple train stations and lines.  Add to that the thousands and thousands of hotel rooms that have to be available.  Florida actually had a good bid for the 2012 games.  They had a lot of pre-existing hotels, conference centers, and sports arenas between Orlando and Tampa.  But the transportation was the problem.  There is no public transportation in Florida.  So they were going to have to build a high speed train, widen I-4 to 12 lanes, and create a whole system of buses.

All that money going into the bid, the prep, the construction is supposedly going to be made up by the influx of money into the area.  But what about afterwards?  There is the upkeep of these newly created items.  That train that wasn't needed before the Games is now going to drain money.  The stadiums can be repurposed - most of the time.  Sydney and Atlanta turned the Olympic Village into housing.  But what the heck are you going to do with a velodrome?  (For the cycling events.)

So where is the Olympics going?  I don't think it is going to disappear.  Worldwide, it still has a huge draw.  And the next few Olympics - at least the next two Summer ones - will have a lot of draw to Americans.  But I wonder how it is going to have to adapt to succeed in the changing world.  I love the Olympics.  I like seeing the spectacle.  I enjoy the sports, even if I don't want them the rest of the time.  I like bobsledding and ski jumping and downhill events.  In the summer, I like gymnastics and swimming and track and field.  I even have grown to really like curling this year.  But, like many people, I want to be able to watch them without hundred of commercials and stupid interruptions.  It is like the NFL.  It used to be watching a game was exciting.  But now, there are so many television time outs and sideline reports and so much hype, that the game has become less fun.  UNTIL it goes into overtime.  Then, the tv timeouts go away and the game becomes what it once was.  That is how Olympics hockey, basketball, most Olympic events are.  They are heart pounding, exciting, thrilling.  They have clear winners and losers.  That is why they have gotten to the point they have.  So, let the Games speak for themselves.  Don't try to make them dramatic or suspenseful - they already are.  Let them unfold as they should.  Make us stay up late to see important races, instead of holding them until tomorrow when we'll watch them on YouTube.  Use the new technology to help.  The Olympics in HD is stunning.  Try out new camera angles and 3D technology.  Give us cameras imbedded in the track.  I love the new cameras they use in swimming.  Come up with ways to broadcast the games that will make us WANT to wait to see the events.  Give us a reason to tune in instead of checking the results on our iPhone app.  Put the extra stuff online - the bios, touching stories, travel dialogues.  Make it so that what we are seeing is so phenomenal on television that we won't be satisfied with just replays.  That will make it must-see again.

A Fraud

fraud  |frawd|

noun

• wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain
• a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.

We are in the middle of awards season, or as I like to call it - The Time of Year When Critics Show Just How Unconnected They Are to the Rest of the World.  At least one time during all of the award shows, one female celebrity will have the misfortune (or fortune, depending on your level of cynicism) of wearing a dress that appears to be perfectly normal until it gets hit by the bright lights of the red carpet or stage.  When those lights slam into that dress, it will become transparent - revealing everything underneath.  It happens every year.  

This is what just happened to Alex Rodriguez.  And Michael Phelps.  And Christian Bale.  When the bright lights hit them, they took away all the glamorous and attractive and heroic outer coating and showed us exactly what was underneath.  And in each case, we are left to look at those guys a little different.  

A-Rod

Rodriguez was the Chosen One.  He put up unbelievable numbers at a very young age.  He actually had a legitimate chance to break every offensive record in Major League Baseball.  There had rarely been such a combination of power, speed, defense, and marketability.  He was voted one of People's 50 Most Beautiful.  He signed the richest contract in baseball history.  10 Years, $252 Million.  And he labored in smaller markets and generated an enormous amount of goodwill.  He was seen as a good guy with so much potential.  

Then he went to New York.  And the bright lights shined harsh and fast.  We began to see the warts that were under the facade.  He was a lousy clutch performer.  He was a diva with thin skin - affected by criticism.  He was a poor teammate.  He was greedy.  He had a thing for 50 year old pop superstars.  He got ridiculed for everything, because every time you turned around he was doing something else stupid.  And then we found out that he cheated.  From 2001-2003 he was using steroids.  Ignore the fact that this information NEVER should have been made public and that it violated so many agreements.  The fact is that he is a cheater.  He had used drugs to prove he was worth those ridiculous contracts.  And now we are supposed to believe he's clean?!?  He has done nothing by lie and spin since he went to the Yankees.  Why believe him now?  He will always be a fraud.  

Michael Phelps

Phelps was the Chosen One.  He was going to restore hope in the Olympics.  His incredible performances in China riveted the world to the television.  Eight gold medals!  World records!  Photo finishes!  10,000 calories a day!  Son of a cop with an adorable mom who followed him everywhere - and that he respected and loved.  My kids know who he is and still talk about his races.  Sponsors swooped around him.  What a great kid, a real American hero.

Then he had nothing to aim for.  And the bright lights of being a celebrity shined harsh.  And they never shut off - even for an instant.  They watch every girl you date.  They see you everywhere you go.  Even when that means lighting up a bong at a college party.  Who knows why he did it.  Apparently he didn't learn from his DUI after Athens.  He likes to party, likes to have a good time during his non-practice time.  But everyone is watching now.  People wanted to defend him - saying so many people do it.  It is still illegal.  And it is still stupid.  And it is still reckless.  Who knows if it was intentional or not - Michael hoping to get some harsher edges.  Trying to buck the golden boy image.  If so, it worked.  He's not a golden boy any more.  He is a fraud.

Christian Bale

Bale was the Chosen One.  He was the finest actor of his era.  He brought a legitimacy and power to every role he filled.  Dragon hunter.  Magician.  Weird skinny guy.  Psychotic killer.  Superhero.  He was the perfect combination - women loved him, men loved him.  And he was filling out the suit on one of the biggest franchises in the world.  In addition, he was trying to relaunch the Terminator franchise.  And he was cast opposite of Johnny Depp in another sure summer hit.  He was Hollywood's superhero.

Then it all became too much.  And the lights shined bright and harsh.  And someone left a camera rolling too long.  And now, we all are able to see that Bale has a wee bit of an anger problem.  It started to surface last summer, when he was arrested for verbal assault of his mom and sister.  We wanted to write it off - who hasn't gotten in a fight with family?  But now, there he is ripping into a highly respected cinematographer.  Going off his rocker.  And he gets defended again - he's passionate, intense.  All good actors are like that.  Maybe it was even intentional - drumming up far more press for his movie than a 30 second Super Bowl ad.  But the fact is that now he's no longer seen as a superhero to Hollywood.  He's a risk, a loose cannon, a bad tempered malcontent.  He's a fraud.

My favorite part of all of this is when people can't accept that a fraud has been revealed.  They try to make excuses and cover for the person.  They say the laws should be changed.  They blame the cameraman for taking the pictures or the movie company for not destroying the tape.  They point their fingers at the others who are doing it wrong.  It is kind of pathetic.  Sure, it is hard to accept it when someone you admire lets you down.  I never liked A-Rod, but I liked Phelps and Bale.  But there are lots of people who associate those guys with their images.  A-Rod is a MVP.  Phelps is a Golden Boy Medalist.  Bale is Batman.  The fact is, those are all roles.  Those are things that they do.  But it isn't who they are.  They are normal people who make mistakes.  Their mistakes are just much, much more pronounced.  I think it is hard for average people to accept it when guys like this mess up.  "They have everything.  Why would they risk it?  Why would they do something to lose what they have going for them?  I would never do that."  But in reality, maybe we realize that we actually would.  Maybe we realize that in their shoes we would do the same thing.  We want to believe that someone else is above that - because we know we aren't.  Maybe we know that deep down inside, in our worlds and in our own ways, we are all frauds.