By Timothy Guy
By Timothy Guy
Thankfully there is something good to watch on NBC now.
The winter Olympics in Torino, Italy have come and gone and overall I wasn’t that impressed. This time around it seemed as if there was more of an entertainment aspect to the games, instead of a sports event. I did learn a few things watching hours and hours of the Olympics that will stay with me.
The Paris Hilton/party mentality
Bode Miller… ’nuff said.
Don’t believe the hype!
From the weeks leading into the Olympics to right before they took to the ice there was a tremendous amount of hype regarding the women’s figure skating event. Everyone was focusing on Americans Sasha Cohen, Kimmie Meissner and Emily Hughes (who replaced America’s sweetheart Michelle Kwan) and Russian Irina Slutskaya. The hype machine was in overdrive, you couldn’t watch Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight or any other show without hearing one of those four names and how they would “dominate the night.” Yet, after all the hype Shizuka Arakawa from Japan snuck in and earned the gold. So much for domination.
Skiing and shooting?
I plead ignorance; I never knew of the winter Olympics biathlon. I was bored one morning and nothing else was on. At first I was wondering what those skiers had strapped to their backs, a camera to show a first person perspective? Then it hit me, those are guns… what? What started out as confusion turned into an odd interest. When the athletes got to the first targets I was fully impressed. Ole Einar Bjoerndalen from Norway was the first to shoot and got two shots off before most of the athletics even started shooting, he hit the required 10 targets with ease. For an unusual sport, the biathlon left me a little impressed.
American Heroes
Speed skater Joey Cheek won a few medals and promptly gave the bonuses associated with winning to a charity. On top of that he challenged corporations to match the donation; according to ESPN he has raised almost $400,000.
Shaun White is known as being one of the best snowboarders in the world. He quietly went to Torino with no flash or hype and took home the gold.
