Archive for the ‘Olympics’ Category

With the Olympics and Fourteen Days of Love and Food and the fake Broadway show opening behind me, I feel in need of a little rest.  But before I take the next eleven hours to not think about the rumpus room that is my website, I would like to give you my final thoughts on the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.

• I wish I were a hockey fan. I missed the game and it didn’t destroy me.  And that’s the problem.  It’s great to be an individual with your own drumbeat in the drum line and all, but it sure is fun to be instep with the rest of the world who loves hockey and give yourself the gift of elation or heartbreak when your team does what it ends up doing.  Vancouver was a sea of maple-leaf-red after the Canadian team won gold.  I want to care enough about something to wear red for it and bump into people on the street while screaming things.  How come I’m stuck loading the dishwasher in a state of envy and indifference?  I will not let this happen again.  I will watch.  I will embrace the chaos, the fight, and the inability to really see the puck on TV.

• The Canadians didn’t just own the podium, they paid off the mortgage, raised five kids, and buried all their dead pets there. Fourteen gold medals.  They deserve it.  If nothing else, for being in our shadow all the time.  (Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.)  I’m not sure why the Americans are called the winningest team or the most decorated.  We (you know, Lindsey, Shani, Apolo and me) got the most coin necklaces, but bronze has only the fraction of the importance that gold does:  He’s worth his weight in bronze.  It’s a bronze opportunity.  Nothing bronze can stay.  Bronze Girls.  Bronze Gate Bridge.  Fool’s bronze (even the fools won’t have it).  Bronze digger (hey, that might be me).

• The US men’s four-man bobsledding team ended a sixty-two-year honor drought and won gold. Glad I didn’t hear this statistic before.  I didn’t know how bad I had it.  But no disrespect, seriously.  I’m always happy for people to shock themselves by how cool they are.  What I want to know is how you get in to that sport.  Is there a pee wee bobsledding league or is all training done in saucers?

In any case, thanks for joining me here at Saving Private Mommy for your primary source of irrelevant Olympic coverage.  I had a great time being rubber cemented to the TV and the laptop.  Now we, the good spectator citizens of the world, must rest up for more adventures in the summer of 2012 in London.  It’s going to take of lot of napping between now and then.

And coming up, is the gorgeous spring outside that nature will officially hand over in the next few weeks. In anticipation, the trees in my neighborhood are sprouting their pink blossoms and the hills are soggy and green.  Ahead are longer, warmer days, and a big boot to comfort foods, plus the Easter Bunny and my girls turning three and six and me turning thirty-nine and my husband, too.  And my oldest turning eight much later.

I hope you’ll join me as I put my feet up for a bit.  I’m going to need my dogs to be in good shape and perhaps you do, too.  I have telemarketers to take on and a governing board of the PTA to make fun of.  Please check back.

And now, a little March poem from our favorite spinster, Emily Dickinson.

To March

Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat–
You must have walked–
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the birds’;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,–I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me–
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

In what are probably the last races of Apolo’s Olympic career (sniff, sniff), he earned a team bronze and a personal DQ (in exchange for the silver medal which he enjoyed for a almost a full minute).  And now, it’s time for him to make out with someone other than an ice rink.  I only ask that it’s not Lindsey Lohan.  Yes, Apolo Anton Ohno is sending  the golden years of his career  (marked also by a silver rush and a Bronze Age) back on the plane for home.  They will be forever parted.  They will remember their time together fondly, but the years of training, fouling, and triumph will be summed up in one confusing, unsatisfying statement:  Here’s looking at you kid.

At a time like this, the only option is to quote Robert Frost (just ask S.E. Hinton or the writers of daytime television drama).

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Okay that felt good.  No matter how much this poem has been exploited and abused by bad writers (not you S.E. Hinton), you can’t argue with these words.  And you can’t argue with the fact that short track is about to become boring again.

When I first saw Apolo skate in the Olympics, I was  three months pregnant with our first child.  That was when she was still a boy and dangerously close to being named Apolo, though we would have honored the Greeks with a correct spelling.  (We could have name her Apolla, I suppose.  Apolla Antonia Ohnoyoudidn’t Koenigin.)   I was on Winter Break from my job as a high school teacher, and in a lasting bout of pregnancy nausea, I endured the hours of the week on the couch that felt much more like a boat.  Apolo eased my pain.

Well since that time, our baby Apolla has grown to be seven years old.  My child can be used as a unit of measurement for Apolo’s career.  Judging by her height and her ability to sing harmony, Apolo’s done well for himself in Olympic racing.  Perhaps that’s why I find his decline or exit so sad.  When I became a mom, he became an Olympian.  I suppose it’s good that he’s retiring.  I don’t want to have a fourth child at the age of 42, though it’s certainly possible…hmmmmnn.

Though in the end, we must all kiss certain things good-bye.  Our youth, our reproductive years, the ability to unload groceries without saying ‘ouch’.  And there is a very fleeting period of perfection in the pieces of our lives.  Perfection that is so easy, delicate, sumptuous.  Like the time during which our children are old enough to watch Sponge Bob so we can sleep in, but young enough to still want hugs all the time.  Or when you are young enough to look good, but old enough to not be so dumb.  Or when you directed that wonderful high school theater production, with that magic minute-and-a-half where the meaning of the play flooded the audience with inspiration and emotion.  And your mother-in-law was there watching.  And now she isn’t anywhere.

That’s not to say old people don’t have fun.  When Apolo is 58 he’s going to be happily drinking margaritas and eating chips and salsa with Kate Hudson, and he will be much happier than he was when he was courting the ice.  Talk about cold.  Lifeless.  Just lays there.  But those moments of brilliance or triumph can’t be canned, jarred, preserved or even tape-delayed.  Unless you’re a visual artist, but they dress weird.  And even then, the triumph is not on the canvas that hangs in wanna-be permanence before the crowds that don’t get it.  Or think it’s nice or love it.  The triumph is in the moment that the tube of ochre screamed to be squirted on the otherwise cool palette, and threatened to destroy the comfort of blue fading to gray, and did and was.  perfect.  Those moments can’t be frozen in canvas or on ice or in archives.  Those moments exist for a fractions of minutes of our days.

At the risk of sounding more Ohno-centric this Olympics, I would like to thank Apolo for enlivening our spirits for the past eight years.  I wish him well as he begins the next phase of his life.  And I wish all of us well as we find a new hero or heroine on which our hopes can hitch a ride.  Lindsey Vonn has crashed way too many times for this honor.  It’s scary riding in her fannypack.  And if I cry with her about any more of her victories, I won’t be able to respect myself.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Image via Wikipedia

South Korea’s astonishingly graceful and precise Kim Yu-Na won gold in women’s figure skating, scoring a world-record breaking 228.56, thus smashing, kicking, and insulting the previous record by 18 points.  The record held by Kim Yu-Na.  What does this mean?  Never in the history of Olympic skating have all the judges been in such a good mood.  JUST KIDDING.  Yu-Na earned every hundredth of a point of that score by quite literally flying above the competition, like a rotating swan, injected with helium, and maneuvered by a pre-programmed weight counterbalance system switched to the ‘on’ position by her coach, Canadian silver-medal Olympian, Brian Orser.  He was that other Brian, who in a fierce battle of blading Brians in the 1988 Winter Games,  lost to the very tall, thin one named Boitano, who took gold and went on to be lovingly satirized by the South Park creators, famous for their revolutionary, cinematic triumphs:  pooing and vomiting puppets.  Brian O. said that the loss only haunted him for about…10 years.  Whoa.  Is it inappropriate to ask what would Brian Boitano have done?

But now Brian O. can take some credit for helping Yu-Na usher in the gold that he narrowly missed.  Now if you are feeling the temptation to say, “Those who can’t do, teach,” I will quickly reply, “Those who can’t do and can’t teach say, ‘Those who can’t do, teach,’” so please don’t say that.  It’s simplistic, and it’s not nice.  And it’s okay to be the second best in THE WORLD.  That doesn’t put you in the “can’t do” category.  It just puts you in the won’t quite be Scott Hamilton category.  Or Nadia Comenici.  Even she couldn’t be Scott Hamilton in the 1980 Olympics.  Did you see her decline?  In the end, she really wanted to be Bart Conner anyway, which is why she married him and had his baby.  If you can’t be them, replicate them.  I’m sure Yoko Ono felt the same.

But back to the superstar, please.  Yu-Na brings in eight-million dollars a year and, according to the media, has had enormous pressure to earn gold in order to keep her sponsors, her biggest being Nike, Kookmin Bank, and Hyundai.  Really?  Drop Kim Yu-Na, who threatens even Scott Hamilton’s place on the podium in the event called Olympic cuteness? This just goes to show you that winning a silver medal is far more reprehensible than telling your wife that you’re getting ice cream, but really you’re dining out from a menu of cocktail waitresses, porn stars, and gold diggers.  (Nike did not dump Tiger Woods, for the record.)

So South Korea has one more reason to smile, even wider.  Add that to the fact that they have a train that can travel 217 mph.  At least the US still gets to keep Apolo Anton Ohno, even though his first name has only one ‘l’.  And unfortunately, Dancing With The Stars isn’t going anywhere either.

Visit Saving Private Mommy tomorrow for more Olympic coverage and, quite possibly, another irrelevant mention of Apolo Anto Ohno.

And your Babble vote wouldn’t hurt either.  Thanks for reading this far.  You are an Olympic reader.

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• Orser finally gets his gold (cbc.ca)
• Inside the Rings: As Kim Raises the Bar, South Korea Delights (nytimes.com)
• Captivating figure skater Kim Yu-na wins gold (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Rochette holds nothing back to take bronze (ctv.ca)
• Gold medal latest prize in Kim-Asada rivalry (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Image via Wikipedia

1.  Lindsey Vonn broke her pinkie after another day of crashing into the mountain side at 60 miles an hour.  There were whiteout conditions on Whistler Mountain, but with all these injuries, it might be time for her to consider that, maybe, skiing just isn’t her thing.  I quit the PTA over much less.

2.  Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso have been described as “frenemies.”  Why does this surprise anyone?  When a blond and a brunette spend a lot of time together, no matter what the arena, the brunette is going to be resentful at some point.

3.  South Korea was disqualified in the women’s 1500 meter relay, and yielded the gold to China, the silver to Canada, and the bronzy spot on the podium to the US team who looked like they also thought they were a joke.  Why do I think Apolo is going to have to pay for this in the 500 meter sprint?

4.  I’m completely stressed out for Dutch coach Gerard Kempkers who, in the 10,000 meter speedskating race, directed his would-be gold medal skater, Sven Kramer, to change lanes which DISQUALIFIED HIM.  I can’t imagine the level of guilt that poor coach feels.  Ruining someone’s life is not a great thing for a coach to do.  I felt the same way when I was a high school drama teacher and I would post the cast list.  I can be credited with giving the world a few more surgeons.  You’re welcome, world.

5.  My husband indirectly stated that the women on the bobsled teams have nice butts.  I asked him how he noticed since I was so busy worrying about how they were surviving riding the track upside down with their helmets carving the ice and being EJECTED from the bobsled onto the frozen chute.  He said that it was SO EASY TO SEE what their butts look like, and he reenacted the departure where they push the bobsled back and fourth to get momentum and their butts bob up and down.  Click here to see this action with a wardrobe malfunction bonus.  My husband tried to make up for this remark by saying that he wanted me to be an Olympic bobsledder for Halloween.  There really are so many ways to say, I love you.

6.  I would like to give a shout out to the real heroes of the Olympics: the unsung champions of the biathlon and curling.  It’s true, these athletes are uncelebrated  because no one watches them.  They conquer in obscurity.  You could run into a three-time gold medal biathlete at Safeway and never even know it.  It’s one thing to fail in private, it’s another to be the best in the world IN PRIVATE.  You could die from the irony alone.  And it sort of defeats the purpose of conquering the world if no one knows about it.  And while we are in the safety of our living rooms or having a pleasant experience buying dishes at Target, they are having the (race?  what do you call it?) of their lives.  And we don’t even KNOW we’re missing it.  We just shop away while they ski, breathe heavily, and shoot things.  Or push things while lunging as their teammates sweep ice, quite furiously.  On the other hand, Apolo Anton Ohno eats a burrito and we all know about it.  It’s on the news at 5, 11 and it continues to be replayed into the wee hours of the morning.  Yes, he’s good at what he does, but it’s the unsung heroes of the sports we don’t even try to like who are the truest champions.

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• Sven Kramer Loses Gold Medal after Skating in the Wrong Lane (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• Apolo Ohno advances in 500-meter short track (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Speedskater Patrick Beckert Misses Race Due to Turned off Cell Phone (blippitt.com)
• Apolo Ohno Is An American Legend!!! (perezhilton.com)
• Vonn crashes, Mancuso way behind in giant slalom (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Canadian Olympic skater Joannie Rochette lost her mother to a heart attack early Sunday morning.  Her mother was her number one fan.  On Tuesday, she skated through pain and stifled tears to achieve the greatest performance of her career.

The Canadian brotherhood present in the rink extended palpable warmth and support through their claps and cheers.  When the universe seems unfathomably cruel, it is nice to know that we can answer back in stunning grace, skill and style.  Mlle. Rochette, you did just that, and our hearts are with you.

Commentator Scott Hamilton gave a very quiet show of support:  silence.  Rochette skated her entire short program without any comment by Hamilton or his colleagues on all the elements that suddenly seemed so pointless in a time of such loss:  jumps, landings, turns, artistry.  Perhaps the choice to be silent was obvious, but the lack of discussion was so pronounced and unusual that it RESOUNDED on the airwaves.  Sometimes it’s not what we do, but what we don’t do that is the strongest action.

Here’s to a mother’s love.  RIP Therese Rochette.

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• Courageous performance by Canada’s Rochette (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Rochette’s performance a fitting tribute to her mother (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Winter Olympics 2010: Canada’s Joannie Rochette in third place after figure skating short program (telegraph.co.uk)