ARMCHAIR OLYMPICS

ARMCHAIR OLYMPICS

We are like the rest of America. Schlubs. We love to watch the various Olympic events from our comfortable chairs, and man, do we JUDGE.

But here’s the thing: I want to know how coaches find these athletes. Yes, it’s easy for the runners. Your kid runs very fast. So you put him or her in track and field. And skateboarding kids are everywhere, so the good ones stand out. They self-train for the Olympics.

But the high jumpers. Who discovers them, and how? Most kids I have ever known don’t jump over things backwards. So who discovers their talents? I watched the women’s high jump, and besides wondering how these girls figured out that they could do this, I also noted that they were all gorgeous, with lots of makeup, and Eleanor Patterson approached her take off with a very sexy strut. What??? I guess because they don’t get hot and sweaty, they can come out of the locker room looking like models and stay that way throughout the competition.

How do they find pole vaulters? I assume in gym class, the teacher hands out poles? What about Badminton? Who plays Badminton competitively these days? I confess I think of Badminton as something they play on the vast lawns of Downton Abbey. Where are today’s Badminton players found? Do they scout stately homes?

To change the subject slightly, there are sports in the Olympics that are completely confusing. Unless you have taken part in Judo, how does it work? How is a winner decided? All I could see was a lot of grabbing and leg pretzeling, and then all of a sudden, they were on the ground. A split second later, a winner is declared. While they were down there, what did the winner do? The judge did give warnings. What the warnings were for was unclear to the two of us eating popcorn and reclining. My husband thought maybe it was for using the F word while down there among the knots of arms and legs. Made sense to me.

I loved the surfing, but it took so long for them to decide which wave to take. But to me the most boring sport is soccer, where they run back and forth for eons and nobody scores. Golf: forget it. I also am not a fan of the shooting, although that casual guy in street clothes with his hand in his pocket was a refreshing break from all the other shooters. But shooting. We don’t need shooting in today’s gun riddled world, do we?

I can’t wait for the breaking. And the “artistic swimming.” Now these are competitions that call for extra popcorn.