Going for the Gold, Red, Green, Etc.

Tonight (actually today) marks the beginning of the 2006 Winter Olympics, or as they've been pointlessly renamed, the Winter Games of the Olympiad. I will be celebrating with some neighbors, whom I've invited over to watch the Opening Ceremonies from Torino (or Turin, town of the Shroud) on my magnificent HD-TV picture. We are going to dine on pizza, salad, and chocolate mousse. None of these is especially pertinent to winter athletics, but if anyone complains I'll just put on my ski pants and serve cocoa. The festive gathering should help compensate for the fact that I watched the Super Bowl alone.

I always enter the Winter Olympics expecting them to somehow be involving, and I am usually disappointed. Historically there have been some good moments--Dorothy Hamill skating to perfection in 1976, the U.S. hockey do-you-believe-in miracle of 1980, and Tanya Harding crying when her shoe laces broke in 1994. But the expansion of winter sports into arcane varieties of snow and ice frivolity have diminished its appeal. For instance, today I read that an American athlete named Zach Lund, a slider on the skeleton team, was banned from the games for using a hair-restoration product with the potential to mask steroid use. Well, I understand what hair loss is (it's something that happens to other men), and I know about steroids; but I couldn't possibly tell you what a slider does or what a skeleton team is. So the tragedy doesn't exactly resonate for me, even if Zach is all broken up.

In the Olden Days, when there were simply ice skating, ski runs and hockey, American victories were rare and therefore more meaningful. Wining three, four or five gold medals was a national triumph. Now the medal count has gone the same way as grade inflation. If I insist on rooting American, which is very chauvinistic of me, we don't even have a worthy adversary. No more USSR, who played the Red Sox against the American Yankees in the past. Germany narrowly edged out Team USA in the last medal count of 2002. I did not lose any sleep over this.

Winter sports are generally not designed for fan participation. Aside from hockey, there are no team sports, though there is now a speed-skating relay event. Watching athletes compete against the clock is not very captivating; one needs to heightened excitement of the commentator to make it the least bit compelling. Some personalities are likely to emerge, but to learn about them we're forced to endure the up-close-and-personal features that clog the coverage. Some of these stories can be inspirational, but they usually leave me with a sense of irony, wondering how the families of these specialized athletes could endure all the training and expense for the potential of One Shining Moment, one which most often does not arrive.

The glamour event of the Winter Games is, of course, figure skating, which is always good for a scoring scandal or two. This year scoring rules have been changed, and individual judges are not being identified, for their own security. That takes out much of the drama; now all we have to do is wait for the American pair skaters to fall on their asses as usual, and for Michelle Kwan to come up short one last time. At least she will always have a role in the Ice Capades if she wants it, or on "Skating with the Celebrities" if life turns cruel. Bode Miller and all the other skiiers have no particular future except as quadrennial commentators. Perhaps some Olympic medals to entice some late-night female company, but other than that, he'd best go into investment banking. As for Zach Lund, he won't have medals or hair or muscles or, just bitter memories.

I won't have many memories at all, except for sharing my home with good company, and some extremely vivid flag and uniform colors glistening on a white background.