Olympics

As the closing ceremonies fast approach I have been thinking of these and all Olympics. I have enjoyed these more than the past ones as I have been able to watch more of the games / events. The thing that I have enjoyed most is the telling of the stories. Torres making a go of it at twice the age of her nearest competitor. The women's beach volleyball duo announcing their hiatus from the sport to "work on the team of the future", ie. have babies. Even in the less flashy, though much more historically significant, men's marathon. One of the runners had been a "day worker" making as much as 30 cents a day collecting wood. I felt the electricity from Bolt's historic runs in the 100 and the 200. What I really found interesting is how our man Jacques was forced to conference with the Georgian President to convince him to let his country's athletes stay in China and compete. I don't know why, but I was unaware of the boycott of the Moscow Olympics, and the L.A. games. After consulting the all knowing Wiki, I found a new satisfaction in these Olympic games. I was happy to see the athletes give their best effort even when the results left them off the podium. I rooted for the Muslim sprinter who ran in some full body suit in an effort to respect her faith's showing of skin even though it is clear that it would be a hindrance in achieving her golden goal. But at least she got to compete. I would hope that the world has become small enough that we can truly set aside our political differences to let the athletes compete in all future Olympic games. I mean you can see that for the vast majority of athletes in the majority of events there is a small window for peak performance. I lost my ability to feel bad that some guy worked his whole life to win an Olympic gold and came up a few hundredths of a second short when there were countless athletes that worked just as hard for just as long and were not allowed to compete because of their government's pigheadedness. So whether it was Phelps in the pool or the 4X100 relay teams on the track, I was happy to see our athletes compete even though we in the US may disagree with how China runs their country. As far as being a successful Olympic Games, the device by which we measure should not be in a count of medals, but in a count of countries involved.