Olympic Coverage vs Carnage

The Olympics are incredible; they’re like an All-Star Game with passion, a fast-forward passed the Regular Season deep into the Playoffs, a World Championships back to back to back to back… By Day-2 I was hooked.





I was watching sports I knew nothing about, that I hadn’t seen since the last Olympics, and I was loving it. First it was the Moguls; I couldn’t get enough of the speed and the aerials and the fact that although they were wearing essentially the same equipment I own, it wasn’t anything close to Jack-on-skis.




When Short Track came on, my first thought was ‘this isn’t Moguls’, followed by ‘these idiots just do cross-overs and are only turning in one direction’; half way through the first heat, hooked. There was the finesse and Parkour-style agility of Figure Skating, the sheer power of Long Track, the insanity of the Ski Jumpers, and I was getting trapped watching all of it.



When Biathlon came on, I had no idea it would become my new favourite concept; cross-country skiing, which already is in good standing with me thanks to Roger Moore’s 007, and effing guns! I want in on this action. And oddly enough, when there were no guns, I was still on the edge of my seat. These skiers are such warriors that by the time they cross the finish, all they can do is collapse into a heaping pile of athlete. The hockey was an obvious favouirte, and I don’t think anyone can watch the Flying Tomato in the half pipe and not be in total awe.



Don't even get me started on the Boarder Cross, is there anything
more entertaining than high speed riding down a course full of heavy turns and big jumps? Sure there is, just cram 3 more boarders on to the course and tell them the race is on. For heaven sakes I was watching multiple matches of curling.

How do they do it? How can these games keep me from sleeping and eating, distract me from my own life, suck me into a marathon of sporting gluttony? I’ll tell you how, with all their Awesomeness. It’s simply a highlight reel of The Best of The Best in everything Winter Sport. Every day history is surprising us, and it’s hard not to want to watch it unfold. Unless of course it’s Women’s Down Hill.

I don’t know if it was the layout of the track, the conditions of the snow, or the small glitch in the minds of the skiers that drive them to plummet down a mountain of ice as fast as they can, but something was causing chaos. It was crash after crash. Girls were soaring over rises and smashing themselves into a yard sale on the ground. There were accidents within seconds of leaving the gate, within sight of the finish, and everywhere in between. I felt like I was watching an episode of Jackass that had collided with a Guinness Records Book. The time finally came when I couldn’t handle the hurt any longer and needed an escape. The Olympics had finally beat me, and I needed to turn it off. But I couldn’t just unplug, I had to wash away the darkness and destruction of the corpse covered course, I had to lighten the mood, I had to escape the carnage; so I turned to Showtime’s blood-spatter expert and Killer of Serial Killers extraordinaire, Dexter. It was perfect. Note to self, when the Olympics become too intense, it's time to turn to R rated fiction.

So I have learned two or three things since the start of Vancouver 2010:

1) there is such thing as too much Olympics
2) my capacity for interest is not limited to what I know or what I am familiar with
3) Dexter is good, very good.

I say ‘two or three things’ because I am not sure if item one has totally sunk in yet, since I returned to Olympic coverage after the episode of Dex ended… and now, I can’t wait for Super G.