A New Way to Watch the Olympics

I love the Olympics. At varying points in my life, I've aspired to be an Olympic gymnast, soccer player, figure skater, and tennis player. At the moment, I'm thinking curling. It looks easy enough to pick up, and I'm already comfortable on the ice from skating. Although I'm told that big stone thing is a lot heavier than they make it look...but we all know what great arm strength I have, so I doubt it will be a problem. Anything to get me to Olympus.

Since I've had to come to the sad realization that I will never get to the Olympics as an athlete (here's hoping I make it as a journalist someday!), I've settled for being a super fan whenever the Games roll around. I just love watching the events and the excitement of a race or a game coming down to the wire. There is something about sports that unites people, whether they support the same team or in the case of the Olympics, are from the same country. My obsession with figure skating also really comes out each quadrennium...my apologies to my flatmates and friends here in London who have endured my excessive talk about the results of the events. And the stories that come out of the Olympics are just amazing. Just look at Vancouver...Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette competing after the death of her mother and winning bronze, Lindsey Vonn overcoming her injury to win gold, Shaun White dominating in the snowboarding, Apolo Ohno becoming the most decorated American Winter Olympian, Bode Miller overcoming his demons from Torino four years ago, the list goes on. They are just compelling stories about the triumph of the human spirit.

But for a viewer from London, most of these compelling stories have taken place around 3-5 am local time. Not exactly the best time for viewing, especially for a busy college student with class or work in the morning. And then not much of it was rebroadcast in primetime, which was a little weird. People here just don't seem as excited about the Olympics. On the Friday of the Opening Ceremonies, the Canadian Embassy, which happens to be right near my classroom building, set up some activities in Trafalgar Square to get people excited...a big video screen, ice sculptures, etc. But there weren't many people there when I walked by, althought, granted, it was a Friday morning. When we were in Edinburgh, we tried to find a pub broadcasting the Games, but it was pretty hard. When we asked the guy at the desk at our hostel for some advice, he was shocked we even wanted to watch at all. "Oh, but you guys are from a country that matters," was his response...apparently he did not have much faith in the athletes from Great Britain, haha.

As I mentioned, I am not only a superfan of the Olympics, but the figure skating discipline in particular. Which is how I found myself setting my alarm for 3 am on the evening of the men's long program, after only having gone to bed at one, to watch Evan Lysacek's showdown with Evgeny Plushenko. And it was more than worth it, after watching them both throw down their best efforts and then my fav Lysacek coming out on top. I was lying in the dark, in my bed with my laptop on my lap, watching the live feed from the BBC website, and silently screaming with joy as Lysacek landed jump after jump. I'm sure most of you aren't surprised.

I suppose I could take this opportunity to weigh in on the controversy surrounding Evan's gold medal. But then I would have to dignify Plushenko's hip shaking, shoulder shimmying, and kiss blowing as actual footwork. And I'd really rather not do that. ;)

Suffice to say that I think the skater with the complete package won--jumps, intricate footwork, beautiful choreography and presentation, and difficult spins. No disrespect to Plushenko's jumping ability, because that quad-triple is amazing, but jumping was really all he did. And not even well every single time. I will say that I think it is ridiculous that everyone is giving Evan a hard time about the quad. He can't do it because of an injury; it wasn't that he copped out. He decided to go out and skate his personal best and let the chips fall where they may. You can't fault the guy for doing the best he could do on that night. He didn't make a decision to bring the rest of men's figure skating back to the 1980s and all that other stuff they are accusing him of. He made a decision based on his own personal foot injury, not one for the rest of the sport. And as for all the smack-talking that is occuring after, its just making figure skating look bad. Plushenko said that Lysacek "needed" the gold more than he did, but it seemed to me that Lysacek wanted it more. It wasn't his federation or his wife convincing him to come back and skate, but his own dream and desire.

Well, maybe I should just write a sports blog. Or better yet, a figure skating blog. Apologies for the tangent...back to the post!

I sadly wasn't able to stay up for the other figure skating events, what with all the papers and homework I had this week, but working at NBC definitely came in handy. There is a program on our computers that lets you watch TV and usually mine is on the Today show, since that is the program we do the most stories for. But the past two Wednesdays, I have had it in the British Eurosport station as it replayed both the men's and women's short programs. Pretty much the most wonderful two days at work possible...typing away as I watched my favorite sport out of the corner of my eye.

So as this Olympics comes to a close, I'm already looking forward to the next one. And being able to watch it at a normal hour.