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Showing posts from August, 2024

Olympic Rings and Emotional Things: What is it about the Olympics that make us ugly cry over sports and athletes we've never heard of?

I'm sitting here on a Wednesday afternoon where, from my couch,  I am transfixed by the multicast view of the Olympics. A quadrant of screens take up the TV where a medal ceremony, men's basketball, skateboarding and a women's soccer game are all happening at the same time. Now, I've always been someone with a love of sports - and it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for me to watch multiple events at the same time, or maybe even grab a stealth peak of the ESPN app to check the score while at a wedding...but to have a quad screen up with multiple sports - even for me, that seems excessive. It got me thinking, what is it about the Olympics that continually captures my attention so fully I can not simply fathom picking ONE of these events to watch? The simple and most obvious answer is that it's fun to watch the world's best athletes compete against each other. You get the super teams, the living legends, the hometown heroes, the underdogs, the record holders - ...