Olympic Thoughts and Predictions

I must say the wife and I are excited about the opening ceremonies tonight. You know there will be ten thousand Chinese acrobats making the world’s greatest human pyramid. I do love the Summer Olympics and can’t let them begin without some predictions.

Men’s Basketball – Team USA will lose… in the group round, and squeak by Spain for the gold medal. This will be the hardest test ever for a US basketball team, but the Doberman and King James will them to victory in the end. Still, why didn’t they bring more size? I wish Duncan or KG was there. KG especially because of the emotional power of his presence.

NBC – I will grow to despise NBC more than ever during these Olympics with the ridiculous tape delay and Bob Costas trying to inject tension and drama into an even that was reported on the internet 15 hours before hand.

Brett Favre – With the Olympics starting we can all stop caring about Brett Favre. That is reason to rejoice.

Somewhere Dick Ebersol is crying – with both of the Hamm twins out, a major marketing avenue filled with human interest stories has been lost. This is more devastating than when Nike ran all of those Dan vs. Dan commercials and one of the Dan’s didn’t qualify for the Olympics.

Urine will dominate – There will be a lot of talks about the results of people peeing in cups throughout the Olympics. Sad that drug testing will cloud ever major track event. It is hard to trust the greatness we see from the athletes we watch. I really hope that none of the major competitors get busted for drug use. That will damage the already fragile trust we as spectators have for our heroes.

None of this will help China – The more I read about all the money China has spent and the new social policies they have implemented to show how far they have come as a country, the further behind they seem as a country. The IOC really deserves some blame for the way they have allowed China to ignore human rights and thumb their noses at the rest of the world. The IOC is not responsible for what China does, but they are responsible for their own inaction. This country is so far away from knowing justice and freedom, and I just don’t know that these games will do anything more than reinforce the governments delusions about either of these major issues.

Here are the events I am most excited about in no particular order…. Kayaking, Sailing the sea of green algae, Weightlifting, Wrestling, Women’s Sand Volleyball, Men’s Basketball, Rhythm Gymnastics (seriously this is the most underrated event of the Olympics, they use ribbons, hula hoops, yoga balls, nun-chucks, throwing stars and bottles of mayonnaise) the Steeple Chase, and of course the triple jump. I love slightly strange and highly specialized sporting events.

For nostalgia’s sage here are some great highlights from past years

So bring on the acrobats, the former Maoists, the General Tso’s Chicken and let’s hear sing the theme music shall we….. Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah,