Olympics are over

The Olympics are always over waay before I feel they should be. I was still working at the summer camp for the first two days of the Olympics. That’s when DVR came in handy to enable me to watch the opening ceremony when I got home. It was incredible to see all these different countries come together for a common goal. It gives me hope for the future.

Some of my all time favorite events to watch…
Women’s Artistic Gymnastics – the power they can put into the tumbling elements they do, the way they seem to fly on the bars, and the way they manage to flip about on a four inch beam amazes me. It’s always sad when nerves get in the way but it’s a truly remarkable event.
Rhythmic Gymnastics – this event almost seems more like dancing rather than like the artistic gymnastics. In this event the women seem to be almost contortionists as they dance around with their apparatus. They never cease to amaze me.
Track – the races are exciting. Watching the athletes run their hardest. There is no bias of judges giving points. It’s just plain old who-crosses-the-finish-line-first. The athletes run so fast it seems like an animation sometimes.
Diving – How in the world they can manage to create such small splashes amazes me. The little smack their plans make when they hit the water is something else I like.

Some new events we watched this year that I now love…
Synchronized swimming – wow. Is all I have to say. To me it was like rhythmic gymnastics but with a whole team and in the water. When they do the sections with their legs in the air and their bodies are just straight down in the water… It’s incredible.
Women’s volleyball – they hit the ball so high in the air it makes sense how they have time to run underneath it and hit it. The number of spikes that were blocked amazed me. It inspired me to go play some more volleyball.
Trampoline – something I didn’t imagine the Olympics would have, but it seemed to me to be just another gymnastics type event, which I always love.

NBC announcers annoyed me several times. The way they decided they always needed to point out mistakes the athletes made, or comment on how distracting a synchronized swimming teams costumes were (it had no effect on their score), or putting in a little special about the Republican VP announcement. I feel they do a bad job of broadcasting the Olympics but I’m not sure how they could improve.

As a college student, there were several of my fellow Texas Tech students that competed in the Olympics. One of them I personally knew, his name was Julian Wruck and he was a discus thrower. He placed about 25th in the event. But to think that I’ve met someone who has competed in the Olympics… It makes that whole event seem less like a place where superstars compete, rather just regular people like you and me who have a passion for their sport. The whole event inspired me to workout more and to see where my body can go. Also to grab on to my passions in life and see where those can take me.