Olympic Thoughts

During the 2006 Winter Olympics we have had two athletes who have let down their respective teams by virtue of being typical American "hot dogs". Bode Miller was the favorite to win a gold medal in downhill skiing, and he finished out of the medals. He shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't care, and that it saved him a trip all the way down to Turin to attend the medal ceremony. He crashed in another event, and straddled a gate in the slalom. He's currently 0 - 4 which is fine, except we keep hearing rumors that he stays out late and parties before competing.

Meanwhile, Lindsey Jacobellis had the gold medal locked up in the women's snowboard cross, and by doing a special tricky method right at the end, fell and got the silver medal instead. She shrugged her shoulders and said the equivalent of "Oh well". They are both extremely cute, talented, athletic, cool, cocky, full of attitude and probably lots of fun at parties. You just have to love them. But they don't seem to be taking the Olympic Games all that seriously.

In addition to Lindsey and Bode, there are two other members of the USA Women's Ski Team who seem bent on expressing their individuality as they compete. Julie Mancuso skis wearing a tiara on her helmet. She says it's her "good luck charm". Resi Stiegler skis wearing a pearl necklace. Try that in the NCAA!

I guess I really like the attitude of other athletes from home and abroad who just seem somehow more "Olympian". Maybe it's a sign of my advancing age - I just have to go tsk tsk and shake my finger at everyone.

This author from the LA Times says it much better than I could:

X mars the sport
One spectator has had enough of those 'extreme' athletes at the Winter Olympics.
By Kevin Drum
KEVIN DRUM writes the blog Political Animal at www.washingtonmonthly.com.

February 22, 2006

AM I THE ONLY one who's finally had it with all the recent X Games additions to the Winter Olympics? You know the ones I'm talking about: the "sports" that seem to be more about demonstrating a politically correct hipster attitude than about antediluvian concepts such as competing to win. The current hall of shame includes aerials, moguls, halfpipe, parallel giant slalom and a ratings-friendly newcomer called snowboard cross.

I know it's probably bogus to be harshing on these sports — and vaguely unpatriotic as well — because without them the United States would be doing only slightly better than Estonia at Torino. But I can't bottle it up anymore. Call me stodgy, but it's not a sport if the competitors aren't serious about winning, and the X Games crowd just isn't serious about winning.

Don't believe me? Start with the outfits they wear. Serious athletes wear clothing that maximizes their freedom of movement and therefore their chances of winning. Say what you will about the full-body spandex suits worn by speed skaters, but they stuff themselves into those suits because the outfits help them shave tenths of a second off their time.

But the snowboarders are having none of it. Instead, they wear the same faux-urban-chic-meets-Nanook uniforms that they'd wear for a day of casual shredding at Mammoth. Can anyone pretend with a straight face that these uniforms are the best possible choice for athletes who are serious about winning a competition? Or for judges trying to decide whether a competitor deserves a 9.1 or a 9.2?

And then there's the iPod thing. Last Monday, when Hannah Teter won her gold medal in the halfpipe competition, I was gibbering at the TV set as usual when I suddenly noticed a couple of strings floating around Teter's head. "What's that?" I asked my wife. "Is a faux iPod look part of the uniform too?"

Nope. Nothing faux about it. Teter was wearing a real iPod. During competition. And the official NBC Olympics site informs me that this is common. I don't know if anyone has ever lost a competition because his iPod suddenly shuffled to a song he didn't like or because his earphones fell off during an inverted cab 900, but it wouldn't surprise me.

The final nail in the X sports coffin, though, was last Friday's travesty during women's snowboard cross, a latter-day mash-up of downhill skiing and roller derby. After the usual couple of wipeouts at the top of the course in the final run, American Lindsey Jacobellis was more than 100 feet ahead of the field and ready to coast to an easy gold medal.

But she didn't. In the world of X, demonstrating the proper I'm-just-here-to-party pose is more important than winning, and Jacobellis, who has apparently thoroughly absorbed this ethic, decided to demonstrate her mastery of ripper 'tude with a "method air" on the next-to-last jump. As all the world knows, she biffed the landing and then watched helplessly as Swiss snow-crosser Tanja Frieden passed her by.

And Jacobellis' explanation? "I was having fun," she told reporters afterward. "I messed up. Oh well, it happens."

In a real sport, "I was having fun" wouldn't cut it as an explanation. But then, in a real sport you'd dress to win, you'd ditch the iPod and you'd concentrate on the finish line instead of showboating for your homies. Bottom line: If they don't care about winning — or even if they're just pretending they don't care about winning — why should I care whether they win?

There. It felt good to get that off my chest. Please direct all hate mail to t.j.simerslatimes.com.


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Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

My English friend Mitchy is more understanding about this topic than I am. (see comments) Maybe my attitude and Kevin Drum's attitude stem from the Vince Lombardi influence: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."