Reply To: I Hate the Olympics
I’m slowly catching up on what I missed while I was away. I must say, it’s been rather refreshing being abroad during the Olympics. I don’t know that Aruba has any sort of representation, and my only exposure to news was through newspapers (a local paper and a “New York Times Digest” printed up on several sheets of Letter-sized paper). I hadn’t considered the Olympics when I scheduled this vacation, and in a way, I’m glad I missed it. Two minutes glancing at the paper each morning is about as much of my attention as I feel it deserves.
Independent of my own antipathy for sports, Molly made an interesting observation recently:
NATALIE: “What’s going to happen to Michael Phelps after all this?” ME: “He’s probably going to lay his eggs upstream, and then die.”
This man has spent countless hours becoming the best swimmer on the planet. What does he do with the rest of his life? Granted, he’s going to get some merchandising deals for a few more years, and in the short term he’ll be avidly pursued by groupies, but what’s he going to do with the rest of his life? How do people deal with a few weeks of international celebrity followed by a long, slow decline into obscurity, moving from star athlete to sideline coach or trainer? Most professional athletes who compete every year, whether in team sports such as soccer or individual sports such as tennis, will be playing year after year, and someone like Tiger Woods can compete well into middle age; many Olympic sports, in contrast, are dominated by younger athletes, with women’s girls’ gymnastics being the most obvious example. There are children who have spent virtually their entire lives in pursuit of a goal, and maybe, if they’re very fortunate, they’ll succeed, and after a few days in the spotlight, they get to start life over at the age of sixteen, with their glory days already behind them. There’s something heartwrenching about that shift, even (perhaps especially) for the victors.
Someone should write a song.