Since we’re now knee-deep in the Winter Olympic Games of twenty-ten, I’ve got to say that I have never in all of my life seen so many people who have trained so hard and for so long, fall on their faces and ruin all chances of attaining a gold medal. It was my understanding that the Olympics were created to showcase the best athletes that the world has to offer, but now, after several nights of watching the games and its various events, I’m beginning to think that maybe there was a mix up in the flights and somehow, all the second-rate athletes from the representing countries were accidentally sent to Vancouver, Canada instead.

I never watch the summer Olympics because they don’t interest me. Everything for those games is relatively normal and safe whereas I feel the snow of the winter games adds in an element of unpredictability. In the summer games, the craziest thing you might see is a weight lifter pop a hernia while attempting to lift three times their body weight, or once in a while you see someone in the hurdles event get taken out when their ankle gets tangled up in the gate. Worst case scenario, a javelin thrower pincushions a wayward audience member. The summer games are all about man or woman versus the event whereas the winter Olympics are a three-way bout between man, the event, and the snow.

Now admittedly, I haven’t watched every event televised thus far. I skipped out on the cross country skiing because I had to paint a wall in my apartment and then watch it dry. I’m relatively sure, however, that the exhilaration I experienced in doing so was the equivalent of what I would have experienced watching that particular event. I also opted out of viewing most of the biathlon as well as the men’s luge doubles for obvious reasons. Events that did make it from my television screen to my eyeballs included speed skating, during which I watched one man fall and take out the remaining three racers on the track. As I watched a heap of men with sharp blades strapped to their feet crash into a wall, I could only wonder if the fellow who caused the pile up would later be jumped in the parking lot by the other racers and subsequently stabbed to death by the blades of their ice skates.

I also partook in viewing the men’s Snowboarding halfpipe event during which nearly every participant had trouble landing their high altitude spinning trick combinations. From the way that some contestants performed, a casual observer might make the mistake of thinking it was that athlete’s first time in the halfpipe. Then American snowboarder Shaun White came out and his run made his competitors look like even bigger amateurs.

Figure skating appeared on the screen only at the request of my girlfriend. As I watched with her, I found myself holding my breath with every jump because nine times out of ten, those triple axels ended with the ice skater’s face in the ice. I can’t say that the medal winners of this event were necessarily even good; perhaps they were just the three participants who managed to stay on their feet for the duration of their performances.

The event that was the most painful for me to watch was the women’s downhill event in which the skiers raced down a giant slope full of jumps, twists, and turns. While the goal of the course was to make it to the bottom of the hill the fastest, while still standing on the skis, most women finished the track by sliding down the hill on their rear ends. Racer after racer lost control and hit the snow; one woman even hit one of the flag markers on the track and began spinning while simultaneously sliding. It wasn’t pretty. I began to lose hope when another gal went out of the gate, made it maybe thirty feet into the track and just kind of toppled over, as if a stiff breeze had suddenly come though. I don’t remember what country she was from, but if it was Germany, we can assume that alcohol had something to do with it, in which case, I can let that slide.

I know that these athletes train hard for years and years in preparation for these games, and it’s possible that maybe my expectations were set too high. I’m going to hope that moving forward, the rest of the events go off in an impeccable manner with each athlete proving to viewers why they are the best in the world at their given sport. In the end, I’m no professional sports commentator and I’m not trying to say that I would do better at any of the previously mentioned events… well, except for that downhill skier that only made it thirty feet. I’ve never skied before, but I know I could do better than that.

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