Chris Long is the Weekend Sports Anchor for NBC2. He will be posting regular blogs here giving opinions and observations on world, national, regional and local sports. The blog is making its debut during the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics.
And with a flourish, the 20th Winter Olympics are open.
The Opening Ceremonies were, as always, a massive display of light and sound serving as an initial declaration that the Games are the center of the universe until the flame is put out.
The flame lighting in Torino was one of the most visually awesome I can remember. While it didn’t have the pure emotion of Muhammad Ali’s tear-jerking turn in Atlanta, or the stunning effect of the Barcelona archer firing his flaming arrow causing the cauldron to burst into flames, Torino’s torch ignition was still spectacular. As the final runner of the traditional relay set the flame to a stark metal bar, it set off a chain reaction of pyrotechnics back and forth across the stadium, eventually climbing the cauldron stand and engulfing it in a massive fireball. That initial burst died down as quickly as it began, leaving only the flickering sliver of flame that will stand over the 20th Winter Olympiad.
My chill-o-meter for the Torino Games is already at one.
As you read the blog the next 17 days, you’ll pick up on the fact that I love the Olympics. I admit that bias up front. Count me in as one of the folks who really buys into the fact that they are the purest, sharpest, most exciting segment of the sports world. Sure, they’re not as pure (drug violations / commercialization), sharp (professionals competing, a few odd sports here and there) or most exciting (the watered-down telecasts have rally taken focus off the competition and shifted to the ‘stories’) as they used to be… but for my money the Olympics are still as good as it gets.
Some of my favorite moments in sports have come from Olympic Games, and occasionally they actually involved winners.
You’ll recall Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards. A British ski-jumper, and to call him a “jumper” is a loose interpretation at best, whose lone goal was to be the first from his country to participate in that event. Leaving the ski jump at all was his success. Forget that he was awkward, only landing one of his competitive jumps. His simply being there somehow rang louder and felt stronger than any world-class athlete could be proving themselves by winning gold. The pride beaming from behind his coke-bottle glasses (no goggles for The Eagle) is etched in my mind as sharply as any gold medal winner.
I know it’s the Winter Games, but you may remember a couple Summer Olympic moments that also capture, in my eyes, what the Games are all about. One came in a brave sacrifice for victory, one came in fantastic defeat.
I can’t recall which Summer Games it was… maybe ’84 or ’88. A Chinese gymnast needed a minimal score to clinch a gold medal for his team. Problem was, he had severely broken his ankle in a prior event. If he withdrew, it would cost his team dearly. So here he is, twirling and flipping high above on the rings apparatus. The announcers were pointing out what everyone, especially this valiant athlete, already knew. To attain even a minimum score this man would have to, at the end of his aerial routine, fling himself into the air and perform a dismount. He would fly from rings suspended 6 or 7 feet in the air, spin and rotate, then land. His entire routine was performed with a keen sense that he was going to have to slam back to Earth on his severely broken ankle. The expression of pain is burned in my mind when he landed. But he shut the pain out just long enough to hold his landing, earning the points he needed to bring his team… and his nation… Olympic glory.
To think some of us call in sick with a headache!
My father has said time and time again it’s the single most incredible moment he’s ever seen in sports. I would agree with him, but I have one memory that tops it… and only because the participant lost.
It was in Atlanta, and Olympics or not, it’s the most inspiring sports instance I’ve ever seen. A swimmer from an African nation I can’t recall made it into the Games through a qualifying loophole. The way the numbers worked out his first heat was a head-to-head qualifier against a single other swimmer. The other swimmer was truly Olympic-class, and finished the event in standard Olympic time. So here is this brave, amazing athlete… flailing through the water all by himself. A brilliant move by the TV director called for a wide-shot of the entire pool… with this one dark-skinned man pawing his way through the water. The worst of critics would spite him for his color alone… while even the best of them would spite him for being out of his league. His competitor had long since finished by the time he made his final turn for the finish line, yet the crowd was deafening. This man spent just as much time, and sacrificed just as much as every other Olympian to get to this point… and here he was struggling not only to finish last, but to finish at all. It felt like forever watching this man fight to finish. As long as it seemed to take as I watched… it surely felt ten times as long to the man himself. He made it to the line, dead last, but emerged from the water with the most amazing sense of pride I’ve ever seen. Every person in the crowd was on their feet, cheering madly for this last-place finisher. He wasn’t supposed to be there, and surely a few people told him so when he started turning laps in his first stages of training. But he was there… and that was the only thing in the world that mattered at that moment. Not his color, his time, his placing… just that he was there, he competed, and he finished. He was an Olympian.
You always can see the pride beaming from the medalists when they’re awarded gold, silver or bronze on the medal stand. But with this guy, you could feel his pride. As he wept on the deck after climbing out of the pool he redefined, in my mind anyway, what Olympic glory is all about. Ditto for Eddie the Eagle, and the brave Chinese gymnast.
…and don’t even get me started about the 1980 Miracle on Ice team.
While it’s hard to imagine the 2006 Torino Games can possibly produce moments anything close to these… they just might.
That’s why I love the Olympics.
Feel free to e-mail any questions or comments to chrisl@water.net. I’ll make every effort to respond to them. Please check back every few days as the Games unfold… and then after the Games when this blog will turn to the more ‘routine’ items in the world of sports.
