Olympics

The Olympics are over again. This is the most that I've watched the Olympics in years. For the first time in a long time I wasn't in school during the Olympics. Yes, I was even in school during the summer of 2004. (According to Wikipedia, those Olympics ran from August 13 to 29, so I guess my exams probably ended during that period. But then I was preparing for four months in Colorado, so I probably didn't see a lot of the games.)

I didn't sit down for hours at a time every day to watch the games, but I usually watched during breakfast and supper anyway, cutting into my normal newspaper reading time. I got to see plenty of sports that I almost never pay attention to, like swimming, diving, running, rowing, and the list goes on. I learned about a few of their athletes too.

Several years ago, I remember seeing an article saying they should stop having the Olympics. The writer thought they're too big and they've become corrupt (this was when the bribery scandal was going on). He pointed out that almost every major sport has its own world championships too.

But my experience this month is one reason why I want the Olympics to continue. As I said, I paid attention to sports and learned about athletes that I wouldn't see otherwise. Sure, we'd all pay a bit more attention to those other world championships if there were no Olympics, but not the way we watch the Olympics. Plus, those other championships are just too many, too often. When it's just two weeks every two years, it's not so hard to put some parts of life on hold to watch the Olympics.

Yes, they need to deal with their corruption, and yes, it probably is too big. But I don't think you need to cancel the whole event to fix these problems.