Week 10: The Olympics

The 2012 Summer Olympics will start this Friday in London. I have always enjoyed watching the Olympics, particularly the swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, and track and field competitions. The opening ceremony is something that cannot be missed because every four years they come up with a more elaborate version of what was seen four years earlier. It is really interesting to watch the parade of athletes, walking down the stadium, representing their respective countries.

I just wished the TV coverage was more about the sports and less about the personal stories of each athlete, which NBC insists in portraying during their live coverage. It is interesting to know about an athlete's struggle to be in an Olympic team, but I just think they devote too much time to it, and in most cases it becomes way too melodramatic for my taste. That being said, I find the Olympics a fascinating event in the sense that it unites people from different corners of the world, from different cultures, and from different backgrounds.

The vast majority of the athletes competing in the Olympics do not have a shot at winning a medal. They are there to represent their countries, to make the name of their countries heard, and sometimes to make a political statement. I think it is said when politics mixes with sports, though. In 1980, the U.S. and a few other countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Four years later, the Soviet Union along with countries from the communist Eastern Bloc in Europe and Cuba boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Fortunately, those events have not been repeated since then. The Olympics should be about sports and not about politics.