The Blogs Of The XXIX Olympiad

I love the Olympics. I love the competition, and I really enjoy watching the events. Plus, if the US is involved, I can become emotionally invested in just about anything (I remember actually yelling at the TV during the last Winter Olympics while watching the USA-Canada women's curling match). So when NBC announced that part of their coverage would total several thousand hours, most of those on the internet where you can pick and choose what to watch, I was as happy as a pig in slop. Now that the Olympics have officially started (although the soccer started a few days ago), I figured that I would post about the things that I watch and things that happen during this wonderful 17 days.

Team Handball - I caught a couple of preliminary women's matches this morning. I love me some team handball; it may be my favorite "sport that is never on TV unless it's the Olympics" with water polo a close second. Although now they just call it "Handball"...I guess the IOC decided that people weren't going to get this confused with two guys hitting a ball against a wall, so I guess that I'll follow suit and refer to it as handball, and let the "team" be implied.

Handball looks like a game that you make up in a gym when a group of guys gets together to play baskeball and nobody brings a ball. You find a red rubber ball on the stage, and divide up into two teams, making up the rules as you go along. But it really is a fun sport to watch. Teams generally score in the twenties, it's always moving, and just about every minute someone is scraping themself off the floor after getting knocked down. I saw a Brazilian girl steal the ball and dribble down for a breakaway only to have a big German girl come out of nowhere and hip check her so that she slid across the floor for about fifteen feet. You'll never see an American team in the Olympics; it's dominated by European countries. But it looks like a game that would be a blast to play. Of course, in my current pathetic physical condition, I'd probably have to play goalie.

Fencing - I saw the women's sabre gold medal match between two US women this morning (USA! USA!). The sabre is the discipline where you can score with the edge AND the tip of the sword (WOOHOO!). Not to be confused with the epee (which is a clue in about 75% of the crosswords that I do) or the foil (which you use to wrap food in to keep warm). This is obviously a very technical sport, and the amount of energy and strength it takes to compete is very deceiving, from what I've read. I'd just like it more if they all dressed like this:

Peg leg would be optional, parrot would not.

Equestrian - I saw a little bit of the individual eventing dressage, but didn't care too much because it was just the preliminaries. Like I always say, "A little dressage goes a long ways". This too, could stand some help in the costume department. Something like this perhaps:



Oh...that IS what they wear. My bad.


That's all for today...I'll be keeping track of which commercial drives me crazy after repeated showings. The early front runner: the one where the former USA fencer uses his sword as a rotisserie on the BBQ. Genius.