10/06/00

We Are the Best Country in the World

By David Katten
Sports Associate

The Olympics were back and now are gone and, here's a shocker, no one really cares. Oh sure, there's a few of you who really care about if the Americans and Canadians continued their dominance in synchronized swimming, and I'm sure someone is dying to know if their favorite Indonesian badminton player took gold. But let's face it: unless you are a "sports fan" in the truest sense of the term, you probably don't care which Swiss won the first women's triathlon. So this is for you ESPN and ESPN2 junkies who enjoy sport for sport's sake.

The US hath whumped ass, leading the world with 39 golds and 97 total medals. That was ten better than the Russians.
NBC continued to try to pass off human interest stories as actual news: "To qualify for the equestrian semifinals, she had to battle back from her toughest opponent, swimmer's ear."
Seventeen-year-old Australian Ian "The Thorpedo" Thorpe lit up the natatorium with two amazing world records and only three golds and a silver to show for it.
In stark contrast to 1996, the American women's gymnastics team really sucked the booty. The Russians and Chinese violently stomped the greasy capitalist pigs.
American female soccer dominace has come to an unfortunate end, as the Norwegians defeated Mia Hamm, et al 3-2.
Mexico defeated North Korea in women's weightlifting in a battle of the big buff babes. The Korean inexplicably ran out of time in her second of three attempts, thus somehow negating her lift.
The first gold of the games went to American Nancy Johnson in the 10m air rifle. Leave it to the Americans to outshoot other countries.
"Pocket Hercules," the Turkish weightlifter who is under 5' but in 1996 could clean-and-jerk Oprah's weight, exited the Olympics after failing to make any of his three snatch attempts.
Yes, ping pong is still an Olympic sport. What?
And now, so is the trampoline. You know, the thing you played on as a 7-year-old is considered Olympic material.
In basketball, the US maintained its stranglehold on the gold, with the men beating France and the women shutting down Australia.
The American baseball team beat Cuba 4-0 to take the gold. Just goes to show that our minor-league system has the best players in the world.
The biggest story about the American softball team wasn't that they won gold, but that they overcame a 3 game losing streak. Three games isn't that bad usually, but when you've won 152 straight, it seems a bit uncharacteristic.
Best story of the Games: Rulon Gardner beat Alexander Karelin of Russia to win Greco-Roman wrestling. Why? Karelin hadn't lost. Ever. 13 years of international competition: flawless. He hadn't been scored upon since the Gulf War. As for Gardner, he's just a farm boy who had never placed higher than fifth in international competition.
South Korea thumped the tae kwon do competition, taking all but one first prize.
Venus Williams has still not lost a match. She took singles gold for women's tennis.
Unfortunately, the Games featured more drugs than Timothy Leary consumed in his entire life. Between CJ Hunter's tearful, yet obligatory, denial and a US swimming coach insisting other teams used substances, America looked like a bigger hypocrite than John Daly telling kids not to drink alcohol.

But hey, in a month, who cares? We have football, baseball playoffs, and the NHL. Who needs Cathy Freeman when we could be watching Deion Sanders or Mark McGwire? Perhaps the saddest thing about the Olympics isn't that it occurs so infrequently or the relentless pursuit of television to try to add to sport that which is not sport, but that in a week, a month, a year, virtually no one outside the immediate families of the athletes will recall the 2000 games. After all, we are Americans, and there's a good chance there's something better on TV.