Wayne's Words
August 31, 2004
Reading Time: 4 minutes
TOPIC: 2004 Olympics

I tried to watch as much of the 2004 Summer Olympics as I could. Just like most things I think about, there where good parts and some not so good parts of the games and of the coverage by NBC.
First and foremost I noticed a general apathy among people in what was going on. Most people didn't talk much about the Olympics.
I'm a teacher and I tried to get my students interested in the games by posting the medal count every day, but few kids seemed to notice or even care.
There was some interest among friends in the triathlons, but most people didn't really spend much time talking about it.
I only get NBC on cable and I thought their coverage was OK. It's always good to listen to a local boy, Bob Costas.
There were too many commercials, at times it seemed like there was as much time devoted to commercials as there was to the games.
Their selection of coverage was extremely bad. I tried but failed to watch any soccer, softball, boxing, cycling, or basketball. I missed most of the women's triathlon because of the storm knocking out CH 5's feed. I didn't even see the men's race. There was way too much time devoted to gymnastics and not enough to these other sports.
I thought the coverage of swimming was good. I still don't know why they didn't put Gary Hall in the 4x100 freestyle relay.
I thought the USA athletes did really well. USA had the most medals(103) and the most gold (35) with Swimming and Athletics (Track and Field) getting the most medals.
There were some great stories, Michael Phelps in swimming, Jeremy Wariner in Athletics, Women's: Basketball, Beach Volleyball, and Soccer. This was the first time in a long time USA got medals in the marathons. Paul Hamm and Carly Patterson got gold in Gymnastics and Susan Williams did well in the Women's Triathlon.
These Olympics had the most Women participating in Olympic history, 40%.
There were also some embarrassments too. The Men's Basketball Team let their egos get in the way of team play. Women's Athletics didn't live up to expectations and were in the need of some practice in relay hand-offs.
But all in all, Team USA did well, the athletes were humble in victory and gracious in defeat.
As they interviewed the USA athletes, I still felt very proud of them and of our country.
You also have to give credit to the Greeks. They pulled it off. The Olympics seem to go smoothly. There were plenty of volunteers ( see Volume 1), the venues looked great and no major problems occurred.
I came away with being very proud of out athletes and of our country. We don't realize how much these athletes give up and how much dedication is involved to become an Olympian.
A good friend, Sarah Haskins, is training in Colorado Springs, giving up four years of her life for a chance to be in the Women's Triathlon in 2008.
That's devotion, commitment and sacrifice all just to represent our country.
I think Rulon Gardner the Greco-Roman Wrestler summarized it best. You have a dream, you work hard to try to achieve that dream and sometimes it happens.
We can learn a lot about sport and life from these USA Olympians.

Until next week,
Train smart live right.

Wayne
whuckshold@yahoo.com