When I was a kid, the Olympics were a huge thing in our house. Every night after dinner, we all packed into the TV room to watch on our grainy, tiny color set as images were magically beamed across the world to us of our men and women kicking the Russians collective red ass every chance we got.
There's no two ways about it: the Cold War was great for the Olympics. It gave everyone a team to root for beyond simple national borders. Growing up during that time made the Olympics even more fun than mere spectacle and competition. It was philosophies and ways of life that were on display and competing. It was propaganda at it's world wide best.
Our kids can't possibly understand what that was like or how the Cold War permeated every aspect of life. We were "us vs them" and they're all tolerant and inclusive.
As if.
What makes the Olympics wonderful is that for the two weeks in which they're mounted, all the competing political views and animosity are supposed to be put aside while the world has some fun together. They're not a showcase for how things are but for how things could be if humans could agree on the color of poo.
Even that ideal dream was ruined in Munich in '72...
Not by Communists attacking Democracies, mind you but by Islamic terrorists attacking Israelis.
In the midst of the Cold War, another war was being waged. It just took the West 39 years to figure that out.
I tried to explain to my kids the magnitude of the Miracle of 1980 like this: Imagine how stunned everyone would be if the Iranian basketball team beat the US dream team.
That's exactly what happened when our college hockey players beat the greatest pro hockey power in the world.
There are no events in the post Cold War age that would get me to huddle around a satellite radio, listening to scratchy live coverage because I couldn't wait four hours for the prime time telecast.
Of course, I don't have to; we have the internet now. Another thing that makes the Olympic experience of our youth hard for our kids to understand.
What's easy to understand is cheering for Michael Phelps. He's now won more gold medals than many entire countries have won in the last three Olympiads. He could design a giant, ostentatious chandelier dripping with his Olympic gold medals.
Then there was Katie Ledecki! She won her events by margins so big it looked like her competition had their feet tied together. As my brother Bill put it after her last race, "she made the world record yellow line go home in tears".
I didn't actually see that race, as I was at a local VFW, singing karaoke with a bunch of siblings and in laws. We had a blast. No one will ever be on the Voice. I don't feel like I missed anything, though, since I'm sure I'll be able to Youtube the race whenever I want. This is another modern convenience that takes away some of the specialness of...well, everything.
Man, I sound like a curmudgeon.
I don't hate the internet or the fact that we can pull up and watch events at our convenience. I love it! So my kids don't know what it's like to huddle around a radio, listening with bated breath for the results of Jesse Owens' hundred yard dash. They don't know what it's like to wear bread bags on their feet inside their boots. Things are better now!
Speaking of better, how about Simone Biles? That girl made Nadia Comaneci look like Homer Simpson! When it comes to bounce, Simone makes a super ball look like silly putty.
Ali Raisman did her floor routine in the all around competition and she was perfect. I honestly didn't know what the judges found to take any deductions from her routine at all. Then Simone came out and kicked the sport up to a new, stratospheric level. If you old me she wasn't completely human, I'd believe you.
It must have been like that a century ago when Jim Thorpe came out of nowhere to dominate the Olympics of 1912. He won the pentathlon and the decathlon and it wasn't even close. Greatest athlete of the century.
But its a new century and anything can happen.
I love track and field, too. Our female runners are dominant right now like the men were a few decades back. Since Usain Bolt hit the scene, the American men have a hard time winning. He's another sport who may be other than human. How can a man that big move so fast? I'd love to see a size comparison: put video of Bolt beside video of Justin Gatlin, with Bolt shrunk down to Gatlin's size. He might not win. But the fact is, Bolt is that big so he does win. I loved that our women swept the 100m hurdles. That's my favorite since I ran it a thousand years ago. If I tried to compete against the ladies who won all the medals last week, I'd be finishing up about...now.
the Olympics are ten days long, which is about right. By the end, I was ready for the torch to go out and the athletes to go home. I had several discs of iZombie to get to and I don't care at all whether or not Ryan Lochte got held up or just behaved like a drunken ass.
It's not like he sold our uranium production the Russians, for Heaven's sake.
When the winter Olympics open in 2018, I'll be watching but until then, back to real life.