At least most of the Olympic sports are visually appealing, which is not usually true of crosswords (except wait'll you see how it's handled in the movie). The TV people are good at getting out the back stories so you can root for people you didn't hear of before watching. I'm easily manipulated, and I eat it all up.
I wasn't going to watch until I got more work done, but at the rate I was going the whole Olympics might have gone by unwatched. So I watched tonight.
It did not disappoint. Pairs skating was the prime attraction. I can't skate myself, but love watching it and have seen several live events in Madison Square Garden. There's a new, confusing scoring system, but I put that out of my mind and just watched the skaters. There was grace. There was beauty. There was drama. There was heart. A Chinese pair in contention for the gold had an awful fall (he threw her, she landed on the ground), and somehow resumed to give a spectacular performance, earning a silver medal.
Other sports were fun to watch, too. The snowboarders did gravity-defying feats. There too, I didn't really understand the scoring. An American did a fantastic second run, flying significantly higher in the air than anyone else, and somehow ended up out of medal contention. I also don't get the baggy clothes the snowboarders wear, as opposed to sleek Alpine ski outfits.
I didn't realize it at the time, but several 2002 Olympic skiing events were held in Deer Valley and Park City, right where we just were. Our humble Puzzle Palace was in a world-class ski resort. We're world-class too, just not in a real sport.
