Not everyone is as excited about the Olympics as they seemed to be when I was younger. Maybe it's because the goings-on of adult life leave you less time to get excited about things like that.
But as the games start Friday in Vancouver, I think it's worth watching. You may wind up with a great memory.
I remember the excitement of trying not to hear what happened in the downhill in the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, since it was shown on tape-delay the next night.
I remember the 1980 Team U.S.A. win against the Soviet Union in Lake Placid, a moment that transcended sports, even though a 7-year-old kid in Oklahoma only liked it for the excitement of the win.
I remember Eric Heiden, Bonnie Blair and later, when short-track speed skating joined the games, Apolo Anton Ohno and his cool "soul patch" that I've worn for most of the eight years since his Olympic debut.
As a lifelong hockey fan, I like nothing more than a good two weeks of hockey, even back when it was contested between a bunch of guys I'd never heard of.
Now, you have stars from professional hockey filling the rosters of all the top teams. The National Hockey League shuts its whole schedule down for about two weeks while the league's stars trade in the jerseys they're paid to wear for those representing their homelands.
Does it make for better, more skilled hockey? Surely it does. But will it produce the stories of unheralded players making a name for themselves on the biggest stage they've ever played on?
I've never gotten into the X Games and all the wild array of extreme sports that go into them. The Winter X Games are the same deal, but with snowboards and skis replacing skateboards and baggy jeans.
They're tremendous athletes, don't get me wrong. I can't imagine standing at the top of the halfpipe, even in my athletic prime, and thinking I could "drop in" without leaving some appendages behind.
But will I watch it? I don't know.
And then we have figure skating. I sort of gnash my teeth whenever I see it on television most of the year, usually opposite some huge football or basketball game as the choice for the households who clearly wouldn't want to take in those alternatives.
And despite the teeth-gnashing, I remember the perfection of Torvill and Dean in 1984 and their remarkable ice dancing, Scott Hamilton flipping through the air and Oksana Baiul and Sarah Hughes dazzling judges and fans alike.
Wow, I never thought I'd write so much about figure skating, but there you go.
Some things have gotten better over the years. I'm amazed the number of people I know who are hooked on curling, watching every second of the sport they can, even if it gets forgotten immediately after the Olympic flame is extinguished. I guess there isn't quite enough demand for an all-curling channel to join all those other individual sport channels at the end of the expanded cable package. But I digress.
Fact is, we have a whole lot of distractions going on around us than in years when the Olympics really were the biggest thing going on for two weeks. Even if they still might be the "biggest" thing they are far from the "only" thing we're going to have a chance to distract ourselves with.
Just since the last winter Olympics, we've seen Twitter take over our phones, Facebook take over our computers and text-messaging take over our lives.
But, for Bill Johnson's sake -- and yes, someone told me he won the downhill before I got to watch it -- it's worth it to tune in to the Olympics for a little while. Maybe you'll see something amazing.
Christian Potts 366-3544 cpotts@normantranscript.com
