Thursday, August 21, 2008

Some Olympic Sports

…just make me scratch my head and wonder what the Halifax is going on. I watched wrestling and tae kwon do and wondered why anyone no matter how talented would step into a ring make one or two moves or bounce on their toes and hope that the judges see the moves that you make. 6 minutes and your day is done but then so is your whole trip to Beijing. It just seemed pointless.

On the other hand – total event time that Usain Bolt spent on the track winning both of his world record breaking medals likely did not even add up to 6 minutes. There is something about that race that has stuck with me.

He was alone in a class all his own. And it's his birthday as well.

So he pees into the cup and presuming he's clean it'll all be good. What can I say I am a sceptic! It makes me wonder about how sport affects people. In a few brief moments of lucidity I watched myself entranced by this Jamaican sprinter. I also yelled at the television as Simon Whitfield closed in on his silver medal. Why do I do that – it seems really silly actually. My response seems far too instinctual and that worries me. It makes me wonder from where and to what benefit such a basic response might serve the human condition other than as a perfectly useless distraction from the everyday. And then to think that these athletes devote their entire existence to the pursuit of these accolades. And in most cases the result is loss. All that effort and seemingly no pay off.

But there it is my emotional impulses overtaking most of my rational processes in favour of a ridiculously extravagant expression. Somehow most rational evaluations of this phenomenon seem hollow. An instinctual response to highly developed mating rituals that are meant to demonstrate the finest characteristics of the species? Okay, but somehow it doesn't sound all that convincing. Or some design characteristic that is intended to draw us toward the Divine ideal of perfection? Again, fine but somehow that seems to read too much into it. I am stumped.

There have been a several of these moments in these last two weeks and I have enjoyed them immensely.

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