THE OLYMPIAD--21ST WINTER GAMES

The Winter Olympics, the 2010 edition, is upon us. I love watching the Olympics. Summer or Winter, it's all good. I enjoy watching the women and men--for the most part, amateurs--competing, in their chosen sport, against the best that the world has to offer.

Sometimes, when the Olympiad is not upon us, I sniff and scoff at the banality of sports like downhill skiing, bobsled, beach volleyball, archery.... But then, when the Opening Ceremonies, well, open, I'm hooked. It's the stories, I guess, that grab my watchingeye. The stories of the athletes' tribulations and triumphs. The stories suck me in.

I think it's the athletes' passion that convinces me. The arduous training days, the postponement of basic human wants and desires and lusts that they, more often than not, smother in the hopes of achievement. Well, that speaks to me. I am a somewhat athletic person. I can rain threes in basketball, I can make diving catches in softball, I can throw a tight pigskin spiral, I can juggle.... But, I know, I lack the passion that these men and women hold.

[I'm not an Olympic athlete. There. I said it. I feel so much better now.]

Which makes what happened today so damned tragic. A 21-year-old Georgian (Russian Georgia) died as a result of an accident during a training run in the Luge. Lugers are fucking crazy to start with, I think. Basically, they're lying on their back, on a sled, on something like a bobsled track, wherein their speeds can reach in excess of 80 miles an hour. Um. Yeah. Sounds safe. It's just horrible, though. A 21-year-old, ranked 44th in the world at his sport, hit a curve a little too tightly and thus upended himself from his sled and went airborne, slamming into a steel girder, back/neck-first at, probably, 85 miles an hour. (In a case like this, the helmet ain't a savior.)

I just think of all the time that that kid put in to training and postponements of Want and it just makes me fricking sick.

What a way to open The Games, eh?

Mister Rogers: "Can you say 'pall'? I knew you could."

Another thing? That makes me ill? I am human. I am not immune to craning my neck at an accident site, to, perhaps, see some carnage. But I was shocked, actually, when, on the national news on whatever network, I saw the hapless Georgian going into his death-soar.

>>>Meet steel girder/column.<<<

We were warned, of course, before they aired the video of the guy's imminent death, but, still. Did they have to show it four times? Twice in slow-motion? I think not.

Sure. It's news. Being the Olympics, it is world news. But. Just...no. I think most of us human beans have the (perhaps) Neolithic urge to survey tribulation and say to ourselves, "That bad. Sho. But that not me. Sho." But there should also be some small amount of dignity in death. The guy was a fucking athlete, you know? He trained the majority of his life for his chosen sport. Was he great at it? Well. 44th in the world is nothing to sneeze at. But for what will the Georgian be remembered? His slow-motion death.

"Hey! Remember that dude that died before the '10 Olympics even started?! He, like, flew off his bobsled, or something, and then, like, smi-zashed into a concrete wall, back-first?!"

"Um. No?"

...Consideration...

"Oh! Yeah! He died, right? But it wasn't, like, bobsled, or nothing, it was...what'd'ya call? Loogie?"

".... Oh! Yeah. Luge. It's a sport where you slide down icy tracks, on your back, in a kinda sled, and you go, like, 45 miles an hour, or something. Wait. Make that 85 or 90. Damn."

Damn.

Well, anyway, I love the Olympics. I just do. Sure it's over-journalized, sure it's sssssssappy, sometimes, most times. It is what it is. I am geeked to watch as much as I can.

(Also? Lindsey Vonn? She is fucking hot. Her face? Her tightly-toned body, sculpted out of years of skiing and training? Um. Yeah. Mmmmmm....)

=o)