Olympics Curmudgeon

I am not sure why I think this but I am not really all that excited about the Olympics. Here are the reasons. #1 - I am impressed with some of the physical abilities of many of the athletes but the range of events is a bit of an overload for me, especially near the end of the AAA baseball season. I honestly don't care whether some Russian woman who can bench press a million pounds but looks like a fattened hog wins over her equally absurd competitor. #2 - Some of the sports don't seem real - how about synchronized diving? Who thought that one up? #3 - The judging in many of the events is bizarre. Last night we watched the individual events on the women's gymnastics - on the uneven parallel bars there was a dispute for the Gold and the Silver between a Chinese athlete and an American one. The decision on awarding the Gold to the Chinese athlete involved a procedure for breaking a tie that no one - not the officials nor the coaches nor the expert commentators could explain. It looked a lot to me that the award was almost given at random. #4 - With the Internet you know the results before they are telecast. #5 - I am not sure that the Olympic ideal is still there. Indeed, the best athletes in the world in basketball are there but how can one say that NBA stars have any relation to the notion of an amateur. #5 - The IOC voted baseball and softball out of the 2012 games. #6 - The expert commentary is odd. I am not sure where the networks get many of the commentators or what those people do between the games - it is hard to believe that many are gamefully employed. #6 - Especially in the children's sports the performers seem like caged birds. I wonder what kind of childhood many of those kids have. I wonder what it would be like to be 40 and a former also ran in an Olympic event.