Lord of the Five Rings

First published February 24, 2006

Hi. My name is Mike. I’m an Olympaholic.

Now I’m aware that some of you might be a little bit indifferent to the Winter Olympics that are just winding down right now in Turin, Italy. According to the NBC ratings, that would be about 99.8% of you.

But I just can’t help it. I’m hopelessly hooked on spending two weeks every four years fanatically watching people I’ve never heard of, doing things I won’t even remotely care about again for the next two hundred and six weeks.

I’m not really sure why.

It might be because I know I’m watching people who are the best in the world at whatever it is they are doing. You pretty much have to respect a guy who is the best in the world at flopping onto a coaster sled and hurtling head-first down a chute of solid ice at more than eighty miles per hour. Instead of psychological treatment, this guy gets a gold medal.

I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for these athletes partly because I had the good fortune to make it to the “elite” level in pairs water skiing, which is a sport a lot like pairs figure skating with less Russian mafia involvement.

Pairs water skiing is not an Olympic event, but my partners and I did get to compete in the very top tournaments, and we won our share of championships. Once, after skiing at Cypress Gardens and winning the Florida State tournament, a little girl even asked us for our autographs. It’s kind of fun to think that the photo we signed for her that day might at this moment be lying quietly in a drawer, waiting to be discovered by the woman grown from that little girl. She’ll pick it up, look at it and say, “Who the heck are these people?”

Anyway, I can actually relate when I watch ice skaters in spandex and sequins doing on the ice what my partners and I tried to do on the water – making hard, sweaty, dangerous tricks look smooth, easy, and beautiful.

So for the past two weeks I’ve been grabbing every available moment to watch athletic spectacles like “Curling,” where men or women wearing Dockers and golf shirts shove big round stones with handles on them down the ice and scream things like, “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep,” and “Huuuuuuuurrrrrrrryyyyy,” while other men or women in Dockers and golf shirts scoot right down the ice with the stones and scrub like crazy with little brooms.

I’ve been watching things like the “Biathlon,” where people race through the woods on cross-country skis until they can barely stand up, stopping now and then to take a few shots at a target with a rifle. I guess this is practice for the Nordic equivalent of road rage.

Please insert your favorite “Buckshot” Cheney joke here…

I’ve been watching people hit a jump and throw themselves forty feet straight up into the air on skis, spinning and flipping around like a gum wrapper in a tornado, then losing points because they bent their knees a little bit too much when they crashed back to the snow.

I’ve been watching long, muscular people in Spandex suits rocketing on skates around long, sleek tracks, and short, muscular people elbowing and crashing on skates around short, sleek tracks. I’ve watched people sail off a huge ramp on huge skis then turn their bodies into wings while they drop 20 stories to the snow, trying go a little further and make it 20.125 stories.

But I guess the Olympic athlete I really admire the most is the one who is the thirty-fifth best in the world at diving down that chute of ice, or flipping around like a gum wrapper, or rocketing around the track, or dropping 20 stories. This is the person who never had any chance at all of landing a Nike commercial, who goes out and competes anyway.

Think about it. Most of the people who finish way back in the pack in these sports have spent a major part of their lives getting good enough at whatever they do to make it to the Olympics. They left gallons of sweat in the gym, they made all the necessary sacrifices, and they took all the necessary risks, knowing that they would probably never wind up riding down main street, sitting on the back of a convertible and holding a medal up in the air.

They’ve gone for years knowing that if they tell a stranger, “I’m a Luger,” they are most likely to hear, “Um, I’m an Aquarius.” Now, after going to Italy and finishing 35th, they can say, “I’m an Olympian.”
Everybody should know what that means.

Copyright © 2006 Michael Ball