Weekend Assignment Results: The World Was Watching

I'm a little surprised - pleased by surprised - at the excellent response to last week's Weekend Assignment #230: The World Is Watching, in which I asked whether you watched the Olympics this year. The responses covered different levels of interest, different sports, and even different Olympics, which is fine by me!

Becky said in comments...

While I have a small interest in some summer olympic sports, I haven't seen even a MOMENT of this years events. Not even recaps on the news (which I also haven't watched lately). I have seen a couple names mentioned online and a photo here and there. That's about it.

Barbara said in comments...

I don't watch the olympics religiously but I do enjoy the gymnastics, in the winter I like the ice skating.
Barbara

Laura said...

I caught a couple of races with Michael Phelps. I usually watch more than I have, but I was traveling around the country and had not set TiVo to tape them before I left. I like watching swimming, volleyball, and track on TiVo, since you can fast forward and find out who wins without sitting through the whole thing. The swim team guys were really buff this year.

Sarah said...

Um, the Olympics have been happening? OK, actually it isn't quite that bad. I know the Olympics began on 8/8/08 and ended today. Having been in Beijing myself two years ago, I even made a few first-hand observations of the city's gargantuan efforts to prepare itself for them.

Florinda said...

Even if the sports had more appeal to me, I feel that the way the TV coverage is done detracts from the games themselves. I don't really enjoy the "USA vs. the world" angle; isn't it "every country in the world vs. each other," really? The soft-focus human-interest stories about the favored athletes have become joke fodder rather than interesting background.

Mike said...

I'll admit, I got sucked in to the Michael Phelps hype. I wanted to see if he'd break Mark Spitz record. I remember pretending to be him with my brother and step-brother when we would go to the pool. I was only three when he won the medals, but he was still popular. Didn't he do aftershave ads? That's where I probably saw him first.

Kiva said...

This year we were staying with friends in Gardnerville and they had the Olympics on from morning to night. I was blown away by the Opening Ceremonies. That huge LCD screen was amazing, but I was rather frightened by the precision of the dancers and the drummers. Very scary -- it was like seeing the Borg come to life.

Bea said in comments...

Sorry for my absence....these past few weeks have been focused on school. I did watch the Olympics, as much as I could. The opening was spectacular. I'm going to order the DVD of that event. I caught glimpses of the gymnastics, swimming, men's volleyball, beach volleyball, the relay races, pole vault, fencing, and diving competitions. When I wasn't sleeping or in school!

Thanks, folks! The new topic will be posted shortly.

Karen

Weekend Assignment #230: The World Is Watching

An Olympic Coke sign for sale to benefit MDA.

It occurs to me belatedly that one of the reasons the online world has been so dead the past few weeks is that people have been busy watching the Olympics. Hence this week's topic:

Weekend Assignment #230: Have you been watching the Olympics? If so, what have you particularly enjoyed? If not, then what, if anything, would entice you to watch?

Extra Credit: Is there a sport not in the Olympics that ought to be there?

I'm not going to go on about this too much myself tonight. I suppose my personal ineptitude in gym class all those years ago (bad eye-hand coordination, easily winded, etc.) stunted my appreciation of sports in general. But back then I was impressed and inspired by skater Peggy Fleming, whom I later saw in the Ice Capades. Skating was something I could sorta kinda do - not well enough to impress anyone or compete in anything, but enough that I could go to a skating rink and enjoy myself.

He carried the torch for a plot-based reason.

That's part of the Winter Games, though, and far from current. Have I ever watched the Summer Games? At all? Hmm. My sophomore year in college, I met a few close friends while watching the 1976 games in the dormitory lounge, but I couldn't tell you whether they were summer or winter Olympics. I remember the black power salutes in Mexico City in 1968, and a gymnast winning a medal with a sprained ankle sometime in the past decade. But I haven't been near the games this year, or most years. NPR covers it on the radio, so I'm aware of bits and pieces. That's enough for me.

What would induce me to watch the Olympics in 2012? Well, the presence of this guy wouldn't hurt:

The Doctor touches off the 2012 Olympics in London.

The least popular episode of Doctor Who since the show came back, "Fear Her" (2006), features the Doctor carrying the Olympic torch into the stadium and lighting the Olympic flame. He does it for story-based reason; there's a tiny space ship inside the torch's flame, and the Doctor's action launches the little alien back to its brothers and sisters in space. The episode itself has its not-so-good moments (or at least, unpalatable ones), but the Olympic bit at the end is kinda cool.

So, any chance the actor can do this for real?

When we lived in Columbus, Ohio, a friend of a friend spent an evening with George Takei when he came to town for some non-Star Trek reason. That year, he got to carry the Olympic torch in L.A., one of the people in the final relay to the Los Angeles opening ceremony. So I'm wondering, if the actor who played Sulu can do it, why not David Tennant, who played the Doctor? Considering his status in British television (and on stage; he's playing Hamlet in Stratford right now), he'd make an appropriate icon to take part in the real London games in 2012. And look! He's had some practice!

I hear that baseball and softball are being booted from the Olympics for 2012. That is just ridiculous. I realize that baseball is not as big a sport in Europe as it is here, but it's a big deal in Asia and Latin America, and must have a lot more people following it than many Olympic sports have. Softball doesn't quite have that cachet, but as the women's equivalent of baseball, it should be included too. The fact that the University of Arizona softball program has produced numerous Olympic softball players and their coach is somewhat irrelevant, but true.

Your turn! Tell us about you and the Olympics. Don't forget to link back here in the entry, and to leave a link to the entry in the comments below. I'll be back late Thursday night with a roundup of our Olympic memories.

Karen