Getting to be time to root for Team USA*

I went to an Avalanche hockey game in 2010. During one of the intermissions, we found out that the Canadian and US women's hockey teams were playing a game the next night over at one of the college rinks. Naturally, we went because I knew it was going to be a preview of the gold medal game at the Olympics that year.

It was AWESOME. The NHL game had been the typical meh mid-season slog, the women's game was fantastic. The US was still trying out players for the Olympics, Canada had a mostly stable roster. The mostly-empty stands were almost all parents or friends and the cost to get in was so low it was token at best. Everyone was playing their hearts out because it mattered. They weren't playing for a paycheck or just biding time until the playoffs. And like I suspected, it turned out to be the gold medal game. 

I know a few people who were either Olympians or almost. From what I can tell, the Olympics are a high point but never the goal. You can't get to that level without years of unrelenting work. But everyone knows the big game.

NickD said:

Mr_Asa said:

Also, they have copyrighted "Olympics" and have sued people to get it removed from stupid stuff.  How can you copyright a phrase that is thousands of years old?

That's just asking for Zeus to come and smite the ever-living E36 M3 out of you 

I want to watch the event where Zeus shows up and starts smiting. 

1SlowVW said:

NickD said:

Mr_Asa said:

Also, they have copyrighted "Olympics" and have sued people to get it removed from stupid stuff.  How can you copyright a phrase that is thousands of years old?

That's just asking for Zeus to come and smite the ever-living E36 M3 out of you 

I want to watch the event where Zeus shows up and starts smiting. 

"Coming up next, the long-anticipated event, the thousand-meter smite!"

NickD said:

1SlowVW said:

NickD said:

Mr_Asa said:

Also, they have copyrighted "Olympics" and have sued people to get it removed from stupid stuff.  How can you copyright a phrase that is thousands of years old?

That's just asking for Zeus to come and smite the ever-living E36 M3 out of you 

I want to watch the event where Zeus shows up and starts smiting. 

"Coming up next, the long-anticipated event, the thousand-meter smite!"

Knowing the mythology of Zeus, he'd probably show up and also do... other things..., but that's beyond the scope of this forum.

Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:

NickD said:

1SlowVW said:

NickD said:

Mr_Asa said:

Also, they have copyrighted "Olympics" and have sued people to get it removed from stupid stuff.  How can you copyright a phrase that is thousands of years old?

That's just asking for Zeus to come and smite the ever-living E36 M3 out of you 

I want to watch the event where Zeus shows up and starts smiting. 

"Coming up next, the long-anticipated event, the thousand-meter smite!"

Knowing the mythology of Zeus, he'd probably show up and also do... other things..., but that's beyond the scope of this forum.

And then Hera would show up and blame the other person, rather than her damn philandering husband, and then curse them in some horrible way.

captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

I can't get behind it. It's a showing of economic strength more than anything.

I disagree: It's a show of who can hide their steroid use, doping, falsified birth certificates, and other cheating more than anything. (Economic strength - at least enough to funnel money towards some national level sports organization - comes next.) And those shenanigans have been part of the Olympics for so long I'm not sure what it would take for them to clean up their act.

And then there's the demands the IOC puts on the host city. The "The show must go on even with COVID" is just the latest. Atlanta managed to escape the worst of things - we only figured out what to do with the Olympic tennis venue a year or so ago, but most of the Olympic venues still host events or have other ways to earn their keep (perhaps the weirdest is that the horse park is also a sewage treatment plant). But a lot of other host cities have a big white elephant population of venues that nobody needs or uses, like these around Beijing.

That said - it can still be fun to watch athletes at the top of their game.

NickD said:

And then Hera would show up and blame the other person, rather than her damn philandering husband, and then curse them in some horrible way.

Imagine the kinds of superpowers that would be on display at the Olympics 20 years later, though!

MadScientistMatt said:

 

....And then there's the demands the IOC puts on the host city. The "The show must go on even with COVID" is just the latest....

I think its more along the lines of "the host city is still responsible for all the costs if they cancel for any reason".  I am sure Tokyo is getting hosed bad on this one!

I also dread the potential for it to turn into a political showcase for some, which I am sure the media will love to focus on.  I am very curious though, when it goes to China (winter 2022), what will they try there?  Could be an S-show.

The olympics are like a short-term stock for these cities.  It's guaranteed to make short term money, but at a high cost.  It's like they buy 1 share of stock for $6B and they sell it for $6.1B a year later, but then they have $6B worth of potentially useless liabilities in the form of specialized buildings that often just hemorrhage money.

There's another unsavory aspect that is rarely touched upon. And it's not the fault of anyone, it's thr metro nature of the beast. 

These athletes, who are often young, have focused and devoted years of their lives dedicated and focused on thr singular goal and then, win or lose, it's over. The competitive drive that got you there still exist, but the outlet is gone. People now know of you and celebrate what you did, after the fact. In the meantime you're left without a focus or direction as what you had been laser focused on is gone, and yet it defines you to others. Many athletes are left with a "now what" situation and struggle with mental illness after the fact. There's only so many coaching positions out there in certain sports and the overhead of space within a training facility for a particular sport can be cost prohibitive. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I think part of the excitement around the women's hockey in the Olympics is that it hasn't been taken over by NHL players like the men's hockey.

While you can see some amazing talent in the NHL, it lacks some of the excitement and drive seen in the young players that are still working to reach the top of their game.

In reply to No Time :

That's exactly what we saw. Players who couldn't afford a bad game, who had everything on the line every moment they were on the ice, who were playing for very different reasons than "because my contract says I'm an Avalanche". 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

That's pretty cool.  There was a guy on another forum I read who went to Los Angeles ('84) from Australia as an alternate for one of the bike races.  It sounded like he had as much fun as anyone who actually competed.

Mr_Asa said:

 

*snip*

Also, they have copyrighted "Olympics" and have sued people to get it removed from stupid stuff.  How can you copyright a phrase that is thousands of years old?

Money.