Swifter, Higher, Stranger!

Ah, the Olympics. A time for all the nations of the world to come together in good spirited competition. A chance to showcase our best athletes and hopefully bring home the gold. And also, a chance for my friends and I to bond together in the lounge, “doing homework” amidst the background noise of the seemingly never-ending stream of events from Sydney to the fourth floor Memorial lounge. Events like… soccer, foozball, and grand championship lawn mowing. Well, okay maybe not some of those. But with all the events, who can keep track?

Yesterday I watched this weird bike race that looked like it took place inside of a cereal bowl, the walls were so slanted. And the guys biking wore these (warning: oncoming sarcasm) really neat spandex body suits and their feet were strapped into what looked like mini-straight jackets to the pedals. Good thing they practice a lot so they don’t tip over or something. I don’t see them getting up on their own like that.

So while they strap their feet into the pedals their trainer (or whoever that guy is) acts as a human kickstand, holding the bike up. And then comes the game face. The French guy looked like an oxygen-starved fish under approximately 42 G’s. I think he expended more energy gettin’ his game on with that face than he did through the rest of the race. The race itself was hard-core weird. They went so slow at first and I didn’t see a real finish line. They just passed each other twice and stopped. All that training for two laps around a cereal bowl and a fish face. Hey, whatever gets you the gold.

But we didn’t tune into NBC at 7:00 on the dot for that. Nor for the swimming, although that was quite enjoyable. May I extend a heartfelt curse to whoever invented those stupid performance enhancing body suits. I’d settle for the swimmers swimming that much slower to have the money spent on more underwater cameras instead. But I digress. No, the real reason we tuned in was the men’s gymnastics. Sounds girly, you say. Well, perhaps, especially when they’re doing splits and flitting about on the floor exercise, waving their hands to and fro.

But look beyond that… in the distance lies…the rings. The rings are a wonderful sport for the spectators both here and in Sydney. Although probably more so for us… yahoo for strategically placed cameras.) I mean, I’m sure it’s great for the athletes too, and fulfilling to be able to excel at that event. As soon as the rings were shown on the screen, the room was instantly silenced in respect for this awe-inspiring event showcasing male muscle- er- raw gymnastic talent.

The Olympics is a time for the world to unite in goodwill and humanitarian stuff. Besides, the winter Olympics aren’t for two whole years, and if I thought the new swimwear was bad, the skiiers’ outfits will be nothing but disappointment. So until then, may the spirit of the Olympics be present in all of us. And maybe since I wrote about mens’ gymnastics, the Torch staff will rustle up a picture of Alexei Nemov on the rings to go with this article. Here’s hoping.