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| Mark Nelke |
'Tis the season for lots of TV and tears for the USA
That stupid song brings a tear to my eye every time.
Doesn't matter if it's live, or on tape, or from a highlight film from 20 years ago.
When someone from the USA is standing on the top step of the medals stand at the Olympics, and they play The Star-Spangled Banner, doesn't everyone -- just for a moment -- picture themselves up there, gold hanging from their neck?
I do. I don't know what on earth I could possibly win an Olympic medal in that is an Olympic sport, but most fantasies aren't real anyway. That's why they're fantasies.
Anyway, with the Summer Olympics starting up this weekend, I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time tuning in to any of the 53 different channels the Games are on. At home and at work.
(Note to bosses: If we happen to miss
deadline a few times in the next few weeks, it's because we just couldn't pull ourselves away from the women's synchronized springboard diving finals. Or men's individual sabre. Or dressage.)
OBVIOUSLY, WE'RE not alone. Lots of people watch sports in the Olympics that they would not watch even if they took place at any other time of the year, right in front of their house.
Must be something about athletes competing for their country. When they win, the whole country feels like it was a part of the win.
(By the way, you may notice that just about every Olympian that NBC will feature during the Games has had to overcome something awful in their lives -- mom or dad died tragically, or mom and dad and possibly another close relative died, or someone lost a limb or two or overcame some horrific illness.
A few years ago, someone on talk radio admitted that they could never win an Olympic gold medal because they had never had a personal tragedy in their life.)
SOME OF this year's Games will actually be shown live. In recent years, we have slowly gotten used to the fact NBC would rather tape events in the daytime and show them in prime time. More viewers is more important than live.
In 1996, I remember watching intently as Kerri Strug tried to nail that last vault to give the USA the gold medal in women's gymnastics in Atlanta, forgetting two things. One, the USA had already wrapped up the gold medal prior to the vault. Two, the competition had concluded several hours earlier. The USA team had already celebrated its gold and gone home long before we watched the women win it on TV.
With the Internet, we will probably know before we see how Ian Waltz of Post Falls did in the men's discus, or how Hattie Johnson of Athol did in the women's 10-meter air rifle.
Hopefully all we'll see from Athens is athletics.
I still remember watching Jim McKay tell us about the 11 dead people in Munich in 1972.
I wasn't in Centennial Olympic Park when the bomb went off in 1996, but I had walked through there about 90 minutes before it happened. That didn't keep me from being sick to my stomach the entire next day.
We don't need any of that kind of reality TV this time.
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at mnelke@cdapress.com.
