Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Olympic Rant

So how about those Olympics? They have been pretty fun so far. The men's swimming relay was one of the coolest things I've seen. The Frenchies promised to "smash" the Americans. Looks like they left their Hulk Hands at home though.


Have you seen those women's volleyball uniforms? I'd say that those have to be some of the most underdressed people at the Olympics. They wear less than the swimmers, how could that be? At least the men don't follow the same line of reasoning. Can you imagine if they all looked like Borat? I think I'd prefer the old school Olympic naked to a thong.


My first taste of the Olympics this year was cycling. Somehow it struck me as wrong for an Olympic sport. Granted, I love cycling myself, but watching it on tv is almost as bad as watching golf. The idea that someone is going to bike for 150 miles--and the idea of watching it the whole time--just doesn't make sense. Can you imagine all those early Greeks waiting in the stands for 4 hours while the guys on bikes toured the countryside....or what if they did laps around the track for 4 hours....oooh, intense. How could you keep count as either a spectator or a rider?

I'm glad to see the American men take home a medal in gymnastics (somehow calling them men seems like a stretch--how about boys--nice boys, strong boys, patriots, but certainly not manly, they have more of the kid brother thing going on) . At one point, they were in contention for the silver medal, but the Chinese-American kid blew it on the pommel horse and got one of the lowest scores ever at that level of competition. My wife openly wondered how it was that a Chinese-American tanked it in China at a key moment. Maybe he's on the Chinese payroll.
Far stranger, however, was Raj Bhavsar. The guy has some serious guns on him. And considering the name, it begs the question, is he Indian? Which got me to thinking, when have I ever in my life seen an Indian guys with muscles. Better yet, when have I ever seen an Indian guy exercise? The closest to it I've ever seen is Mathletes, which like the spelling bee isn't even a real sport (unless you run ESPN2 and think you can throw it up there with poker). Speaking of Indians in sports, where are they? There are over a billion people in China and they put huge numbers of people into the Olympics. The Indians have a billion people too, but I don't think I've ever seen any of them at the Olympics. Weird. Come to think of it, I have heard that they play cricket. I spoke to the CIO of a local company and he said that when they get on the cricket field that the Indians change from quiet people to screaming energetic people. Maybe I'll live long enough to see that someday.