ohhhhlympics

What a week.  What a two months, actually, but what a week.

I got my official acceptance letter to school.  My diabolical plan is working (more on that later).  Oh yeah, and then I watched a friend of mine win a gold medal.  Rowing is a somewhat obscure sport, so this wasn't heavily publicized.  You won't see this on ESPN.  None of those dudes are going to be going on and on about what an insanely successful group of women populate the USA Women's 8+.

I mean, no biggy....they are only 7-peat world champions and back to back gold medalists.  I was watching PTI the other day at the gym and listening to this goatee'd dipshit talk about how "they" are trying to make sports like swimming and such seem legitimate like basketball, but they're just not.  Fuck you, jackass.  The fact that a bunch of d-bag millionaires go slumming in the Olympics does not make them legitimate, nor does it make basketball, football, golf, or any of the other ESPN favorites legitimate.  It just makes them cash cows.  The one US team you won't find me rooting for is our idiot "dream team".  Not a man in there works as hard as the swimmers and the rowers, I guarantee you.

The thing that I love about the Olympics is that the underlying idea behind the games is sport for the sake of sport.  Sport for the amateur athlete who practices and bleeds and works and works and works for the love of the pursuit.  Not for the millions of dollars, not for the hot, nasty chicks, not for the cars and the diamonds.  Just because they love being good at what they do.  Because the smell of the water, or the sound of the bubbles under the boat, or the searing, seemingly unending pain refreshes the soul and gives a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that you just can't buy. 

I love all sports.  I love watching pretty much any sport and I respect the work that goes into being good at anything one wants to do, but it is just infuriating to me when some has-been, or never-was on a cheesy set tries to act like athletes who do sports other than football, basketball, golf, baseball or hockey are trying to legitimize themselves and make money.  These are the people who just don't get it and never will.  That dude and others who think like him are just a joke to me and a poor excuse for representatives of any athletic endeavor.

I sat there with tears in my eyes watching people I know have gold medals put around their necks, for the 5th or 6th time.  Yeah I know those kinds of people.  And that's not to make me look good, it's to demonstrate that having been on the cusp of that dream and knowing dozens of people who have achieved it, I know what went into that medal and believe me.....it is legitimate.

Sport is pure, it's the commentators and the sponsors that fuck it up.