Let The Games Begin!
The 2012 Olympic opening ceremonies are just beginning. Yahoo! I love the Olympics. I love the music; I love the outfits, and I LOVE Bob Costas. With each and every video montage, I will become invested in the lives of perfect strangers, the Gods of sport. I will cheer them on to victory, and I will weep for them in defeat. They will astound me as I sit on the couch—a bag of Cheetos in one hand, a Miller Lite in the other—and celebrate their dedication, determination, physical fitness, and their athleticism. But…badminton? What the…?
It’s a questionable one, right? It’s pretend tennis. It’s the day your high school gym teacher had a hangover. I have a hard time getting excited about a “sport” that is played at backyard barbecues alongside the corn hole toss and the potato sack races. If you can do it in Docksiders and Bermuda shorts, with a gin and tonic in your hand (without spilling), and be pretty good at it, does it really qualify as an Olympic sport? If you’ve seen your eighty-year-old grandmother do it, and do it well, does it qualify as a “sport” at all?
They say the shuttlecock travels at speed in excess of 400 miles per hour. And? Wad up a piece of Kleenex and throw it at the person sitting next to you. Synchronized diving off a 10-meter high concrete platform, intimidating, a shuttlecock made out of goose feathers coming at you at 400 miles per hour, not so much. They say badminton requires lightening fast reactions. So? Sometimes getting to the bathroom requires lightening fast reactions.
Still, the badminton players trained (even it was with a quarter barrel), they are dedicated, they are determined, and they made it to the Olympics. So I will watch, I will cheer, and I will weep.
Let the games begin!