The Olympics fall under the category of Sports which, in my book, makes them uninteresting by default. It's kind of neat to see how much discipline it requires of athletes to train and perform at that level. Even so, I find most sports to be a colossal waste of time. I mean, there's nothing useful about most sports. Watching a person run across a long distance for entertainment isn't the same as, say, training a soldier to do it stealthily and for reasons of national security, as in the original marathon run. It's neat that people CAN do these things, it's just that all of this amazing physical prowess seems sort of flat to me in the absence of any real meaningful context. If they're just going to get a medal (or not) at the end and then be done with it, then I'm not really seeing any reason for me to care.
Also, I don't understand what's so awe-inspiring and warm-and-fuzzy feeling about all of the different nations coming together and pretending to get along in order to compete with sports instead of with war or money. I just don't get it. It's not like we don't all know which nations are buddies and which ones are tense. It's not like any of that really goes away. What's the point of coming together every four years and pretending if, a couple of weeks later, we all just go back to the way things were? I guess it's a morale thing, but I can't really grab onto sports enough to feel uplifted by the Olympics.
All of that said, I know that I'm the weird one here and that most people love sports and enjoy the Olympics, so don't let me make like Eeyore and rain on your parade. Part of my hatred of sports comes from jealousy. I out-and-out failed at every sport I ever tried. I always felt bad about myself because the retarded kid could make better time on the mile run or because the other kids didn't want me on their baseball team or because I was in the gymnastics class with kids half my age or whatever. I looked normal, but I wasn't. I felt that without really understanding why until I overheard my mom telling the gym teacher I was handicapped. With that as my history, it's really hard to see sports as a fun, happy-go-lucky expression of unity. For me, all they ever represented was proof of my own infuriating inadequacy -- proof that you can try your absolute hardest and put forth tons more effort than anyone else, but still come in last. I'm guessing that my lack of enthusiasm for the Olympics is more closely related to that than to any lack of understanding re: the symbolic meaning of sports.
