Despite a) knowing next to nothing about any Winter Olympics sport, from rules to competitors to the name of the sport and b) through last Friday, not caring at all about the Vancouver Games, I’ve recently found myself — like many Americans and obviously all Canadians — in the throes of full-bore Olympic Fever. IT’S ALL OVER MY BODY GET IT OFF!
What’s made this terrible illness so exciting, I think, is the fact that its contraction was completely unexpected. The Winter Olympics, as we all know, are totally boring. Short of a Tonya Harding attack, there is nothing that can compete with the awesomeness of a record-setting 100m dash; no event on snow that can come close to matching a race in water. The divide is straight up Dickensian; for these Vancouver Games to break free of that would be almost a crime against nature.
So they don’t try. Instead, Vancouver has from the start embraced all that is decidedly NOT summer (you saw the opening ceremonies’ giant polar bear, right?) and reveled in the peculiarities of a community that actually enjoys winter. And comparing 2010 to 2006, it has offered some major improvements in the process!
Henning
smpage
Lifting Fog 