Tag: Olympics (Page 1 of 2)

The Olympics of Slacking

3 March, 2010 / Kat

Photo: tkellyphoto from Flickr

For the fourth Olympics in a row, I intended on blogging the Olympics. I’ve been an Olympic junkie since age two, thus writing about the Olympics for my blog or others seems like a no-brainer. I have Winter Olympic encyclopedias on my bookshelf, and my parents currently hold my collection of taped from TV Olympic coverage VHS tapes.

Athens came and went. I was in grad school and was not able to watch until the last night of gymnastics. Turin, I was in a blogging hiatus, with lack of inspiration and an arena of writer’s block. Beijing, I was on a two week trip for my full-time job.

Vancouver was going to change this. I was going to blog. Maybe not every night, maybe not every event, but I was going to blog. My encyclopedic knowledge of figure skating would be on display. My endless search for blog topics would be over.

I settled onto the couch each night to watch the Vancouver Olympics, computer fired up, notebook next to me. Despite NBC’s lacking coverage, I was memorized as only a lifelong Olympics junkie could be. Turn to MSNBC, there’s hockey. Turn to CNBC, there’s curling. Then all of the skiing aerial events, which are just enough on the edge to be exciting, but don’t feature those hoodlum snowboarders with the long hair and iPods. Then, although the coverage couldn’t touch the hours upon hours I remember from my CBS Olympics childhood, there was the figure skating.

The Olympics are just one of those events where you can’t look away, no matter how magnificently manicured the coverage is, how sweetly sappy the fluff profiles are, or how unethically un-amateur the athletes are. It’s a spectacle of sport, the two weeks every two years where sitcoms that have overstayed their welcome and seventeen versions of the same dramatic series are replaced with hours upon prime-time hours of sports. Weird sports. Popular sports. Unpopular sports. Fallen sports. Growing sports. Sports that only Scandinavian nations play. Sports that Russians rule. Sports that only the US and Canada can compete in. Sports that you have to be under five-foot-three to be successful in. Sports that combine two sports into one. Sports that are just competitive, greased up versions of sledding in Uncle Eddie’s backyard in Ontario.

Writing didn’t happen. I sat, dazed at the television screen, and when the delayed late evening news finally began, I would immediately fall asleep wherever I was. The 7 News logo provoked an a Pavlovian response – when it appeared on screen, my eyes shut without effort and asleep I was. I would wake up in the morning, and realize for yet another night, I didn’t blog. I would resolve that that night would be the night when I finally did.

And through two weeks of the Olympics, that never happened. While I didn’t blog, and thus was a gold medal example of how not to grow or maintain your blog readership, I enjoyed. If you don’t take that time to sit back and enjoy a sporting event every once and a while, without the blogging, Tweeting and analysis, you begin to lose why you even love sports in the first place.

Vancouver, thanks for the refresh.

Is the Sports Media Turning Shawn and Nastia Into the New Michelle and Tara?

24 March, 2009 / Kat

Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin at the 2008 Olympics

Two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times published a pair of articles contrasting the current careers of U.S. gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin. The Times spoke to the “graceful” Lukin about the three Marta Karolyi run training camps she has attended since the Beijing Olympics, and her agent about the offer she turned down from Dancing with the Stars. They then profiled a Dancing with the Stars rehearsal that Johnson, not necessarily renowned for her artistic ability as a gymnast, was participating in, quoted her mother as saying as Johnson never wants to leave the Left Coast, and mentioning that serious gymnastics training doesn’t seem to be in the cards at the moment.

The short, less artistic little kid looking to take advantage of her 15 minutes of Olympic provided fame. The lankier-only-by-comparison, more artistic, older teenager who looks to stay in the sport.

One would think we were back in 1998. Continue reading

Revisiting My Teenage Geeky Figure Skating Lovin’ Self #2: America Would Like Figure Skating Again If We All Watched Us Some Caroline Zhang

22 February, 2009 / Kat

Updated 3/1/2009 – see end of post.

Programming Note: I can’t talk hockey right now. Can’t. Not after Saturday night’s BU-Northeastern game. I’m too heated. Going to distract myself by writing another piece in my ongoing series, Revisiting My Teenage Geeky Figure Skating Lovin’ Self. I’ll resume hockey talk later, I promise.

I think one of the most redeeming aspects about me being a geeky figure skating lovin’ teenager was that I was not alone. Back in the mid-1990s, everyone in the United States had jumped on the figure skating bandwagon. Weekend afternoons in the late fall and winter would be filled with all sorts of figure skating shows and competitions on every single channel. The mainstream sports media covered the sport along with the big four professional sports. Everyone in America was jumping on the bandwagon, until they all jumped off disillusioned when Michelle Kwan didn’t win an Olympic gold medal again in 2002.

Now, the sport of figure skating suffers, having lost all of its relevance among the American viewing public. It gets about one prime time showing a year – the US National Championships on NBC. ESPN dropped all of its skating coverage. Even the women’s networks – your Lifetimes, WEs and Oxygens – don’t show the sport. Current figure skating fans blame this downfall in popularity at the lack of a recognizable star – a Michelle Kwan, a Tara Lipinski, a Sarah Hughes, a Sasha Cohen. I believe more of the blame sits on the marketers of the sport itself, but there is something to be said for the lack of a traditional “ice princess” over the past handful of years, which makes a sports marketers job a million times easier.

Well, America, I’d like to invite you back to figure skating. And here is the figure skater that is going to bring you back.

I Drool Over the Olympics Like Homer Simpson Drools Over Donuts

18 August, 2008 / Kat

The Olympics are, hands down, my favorite sporting event. It started when I was two, and my mother, an Olympics junkie if you’ve ever seen one, pretty much forced me to watch the 1984 Summer and Winter Olympics instead of doing normal two-year-old things. This caused me to mimic Mary Lou Retton by diving head first off my couch when my parents weren’t looking, which then resulted in my first of two childhood concussions when I went flying into the window. (The other came while roller skating when I was four, back before helmets were all the rage.) Since then, I drool over the Olympics like Homer Simpson drools over donuts.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to follow the Bejing Games as much as I would like. I have been traveling for work, and haven’t been able to catch the games. I have been trying to stay up for the late night replays, but have been passing out whenever I see a bed. I have missed so much of the gymnastics, and I feel out of the loop. However, here are the observations regarding the little bit I have seen:

This, My Friends, Is Why You Pick an Olympic Team Ahead of Time

23 July, 2008 / Kat

Everyday it seems that I am reminded of another reason why the selection process for the US Olympic Women’s Gymnastics Team is a comedy of errors. (See “How To Best Make Your Sport Irrelevant” for a full blown rant on the subject.) For the past few days, the Olympic Team alternates – Jana Bieger, Ivana Hong, and North Shore’s born and bred Corrie Lothrop – have been mired in a web of confusion about where exactly they are going to train while the Olympics are ongoing. (The alternates can be subbed in for designated team members up until a certain day prior to the actual start of competition for women’s gymnastics – and for the life of me, I can not find the exact date.) Because they were selected so close to the actual start of the games, these alternates, who would need a travel visa to get into China, have missed the deadline to secure such a visa. However, USA Gymnastics thought that maybe they could get the three alternates into Japan instead, have them train and wait there, and then if one of them was needed, get them into China on an Olympic credential (which acts as a visa.)