The Olympics aren’t really doing anything for me this year. I don’t know if it’s because I tend to get more invested in the winter sports, or maybe because I don’t have cable anymore, and the only way to watch events is to stream them and I loathe streaming. They used to interest me, but I seem to now have a growing dislike for the whole thing (which I suffered from in 2008 as well). I mean, the sheer glut of events. Am I supposed to care about all the different weight classes in judo, or the various lengths people run or swim? Who decides that showing off a horse is a sport but baseball isn’t? Why is handball in the Olympics? Is frisbee? Why do some events allow pro athletes and others not? That complaint applies to the winter Olympics as well. What makes the Olympics more important than all the other international competitions all these athletes competed in last year? Clearly, I’m lacking the Olympic spirit this year.

Speaking of Olympic spirit, I have been following the badminton scandal, because holy crap!  How twisted and cynical and medal obsessed are you to strategize to the point where you go to the Olympics and play to loose? How do you play a single round where you don’t play for your life? It’s shameful. But, the disqualification of all those teams meant that Canada’s women got to play in the silver match. That is, they played against Japan for a chance to play the gold medal game against a non-disqualified Chinese team. That is the only event I’ve seen so far, that Silver game, and I caught it by accident because it was playing while I was at the gym the other day. We lost, but it was nice to see those girls (and they looked so young!) get a chance at a Silver. And they pushed the game to three rounds, so good for them. They’ll play for Bonze, now.