My Olympic Addiction. A Biennial Affliction.

One month of summer has come and gone.  I actually spent a lot of it in the sunshine, so my usual white pallor is gone, and my legs are covered with a second crop of mosquito bites (glamping isn't all glamour, y'all).

HOWEVER, now that the Olympics are here, I can already feel my healthy glow fading, as I am drawn to my TV, which is normally left in the off position for weeks at a time.  The call of the outdoors has gone silent.  Instead, the call of swimming matches, synchronized diving, rowing, and many sports that I don't even understand is much louder.  Goodbye tan.

Every time the Olympics  rolls around I think "oh I'm not going to watch much of that... I don't even understand most of those sports" and then a couple days later, BLAM!, I'm working an ass-groove into my couch (Homer Simpson reference... sorry for the crudeness).

I was in Stratford for the first part of this week and watched the Olympics with my parents, who also get addicted like me (it's a family disease).  I made plans to see You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown at the Stratford Festival with my aunt, and felt a pang of regret as I headed out the door because it was taking me away from the Olympics.  However, the play was really fun (I wanna go dust off my old Peanuts comics) and I was able to catch up on what I missed during primetime.  Phew.

I have been enjoying some of the stories that have been playing out during these Olympics.  How about that badminton scandal?  I don't think I ever imagined that I would write the words "badminton" and "scandal" together in my life! (Hey - they put the "bad" back into badminton!  SORRY! THAT WAS AWFUL!)  First of all, I understand why the teams were throwing the matches, but when two teams are trying to throw a match at the same time, isn't the game just going to go on infinitely?  It would have been zero-zero FOREVER, no?

When I saw clips of those poorly played games, it brought back memories.  Mainly of myself playing badminton in grade nine gym class.  I thought I was horrible, but looking back, I guess I was playing Olympic-calibre badminton.  Heck, I was even better than the disqualified teams; I couldn't even get the birdie to hit the net!

(Sidenote: my record in high school badminton was flawless.  I thought I was pretty lucky to be paired with our grade's best badminton player as my partner.  He would field all of the shots, and I would stand back and cheer as we took down pair after pair of opponents.  Now that I'm a teaching, I've learned that grouping strategy wasn't luck, but is called heterogeneous pairing.  It explains why I was often paired with students who had the academic equivalence of my badminton skills in non-gym classes.  Also, I think I sucked at badminton because no one really taught me how to play.  We just had rackets thrown at us and were told to play badminton.  How is that education?)

Enough of the traumatic high school gym class memories and back to the Olympics.  Other than Shuttlegate (as CTV calls it), I've been into swimming.  First of all, I don't like hearing people being mean to teenagers, so I've been disheartened at the finger-pointing at Ye Shiwen, the Chinese swimming phenom.  Good for her for being faster than the guys.  It's innocent until proven guilty, and she passed all her tests, so I'll give her the benefit of any doubt.  Also, I came across the story of Australian swimmer Leisel Jones, who was being called "fat" by the Australian media yet still was able to pull off a fifth place finish in the race that I watched.  This is her fourth Olympics.  URGH.  As if women don't feel bad enough about our bodies, now Olympians are being called fat.  She should have challenged those buffoons to a swim-off.  (As should Ye Shiwen.)

Note how all of this stupid criticism is toward female athletes.  Hmmm.

I found myself on Team Phelps on the Lochte versus Phelps swimming battle.  I don't have any reason why, that's just how my heart felt.  I was on the edge of my seat watching the 200m individual medley final this afternoon.  Yay for Phelps.  (I know, like he doesn't have enough gold.)

As for Canada, I'm happy with our seven medals so far.  Who doesn't remember Beijing when it took us one week to win a medal?  There was some major national hand-wringing going on then.  Now we're just wringing our hands over who will win the first gold.  I've enjoyed the silvers that we got in both men's and women's 8-person rowing, and all of our bronzes in synchronized diving, judo, and weight-lifting were fun to watch too.  However, I was super proud of our women's gymnastics team who surprised by making the finals and then coming in fifth.  Well done to them.  It's not always about winning a medal.

CTV is promising me all kinds of fun events tomorrow, but my friend Heather is coming to visit me for the weekend, and I don't think she's coming to Toronto to sit on the couch and watch the Olympics.  So maybe my tan isn't going to completely disappear.

PS I'm also super happy that CBC won the rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics.  No more "I Believe"!  For non-Canadians, that is a song that the CTV plays whenever we win a medal or something significant happens.  It's very annoying.  Nails on chalkboard stuff.

PPS If I ever talk about competitive swimming this much in a post again, I owe you guys a coke!  (Mr. Burns reference)