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The big question posed during the recent Olympics was "did you hear the results?" With CBS churning out "plausibly live" productions each night, if you tuned into any news during the day, chances were you already knew the outcome of a given event. So all day long on the day of the women's figure skating competition, whenever I heard the news come on the radio, I plugged my ears and sang loudly so as to avoid hearing the results. Then, just fifteen minutes before the broadcast, before I knew what was coming, the commentator on NPR announced, "Tara Lipinski wins the gold." I was so crushed.
Not that I preferred Michele Kwan or any of the other skaters; I'm not that concerned with the world of figure skating. I was concerned, however, that the newscaster had ruined my Friday night viewing, as though telling me the ending to a mystery of which I had already seen part one.
For two weeks I tuned in to the Olympics nearly every night. It was a bit lacking on event coverage, but unlike the avid sports fans, I actually liked the interviews and the magazine style pieces. I even looked forward to the IBM ads disguised as biographies. One of my favorite pieces of the whole series was the broadcast of the ill-fated Kerrigan/Harding interview.
I watched all the way through, yelling color commentary to my husband in another room. "Tonya's coming on! She's telling Nancy she hopes they can be friends!" I laughed 'til I cried, feeling simultaneously sorry for Tonya, doomed to her trailer park soap opera life, and disgusted by the PR-plotted niceness of Nancy's perfect princess life. Not that I think anybody deserves to be hit with a tire iron but you have to admit, as a nemesis, I imagine Nancy would be downright annoying. And keep in mind too that Tonya was married to a real Gillooly — a guy such a jerk that he was forced to legally change his own name because it had become synonymous with loser.
As though the world of the ice princesses wasn't enough for the gossip monger in me, the other skating events had just as much fuel to spark some real fiery romances. One night, CBS had a chart of all the international "pairs" in the skating world — this speed skater with that hockey player and this hockey player with that figure skater and this distance skater with that short track skater and, now that hockey has gone coed, this hockey player with that. I envied all those women. As if there toned, muscular bodies weren't enough reason for envy, many of them were also stunningly beautiful. Don't hate them because they're beautiful. How about because they're beautiful, young, stalwart, vibrant, dedicated and tops IN THE WORLD at what they do?
Imagine life in the Olympic village. Imagine staying in a place where everybody is a super star of the physical prowess variety? Everybody you walk by is not only the epitome of strength and stamina incarnate, but has proven, through their sport, that they are capable of true, unadulterated devotion and dedication. Watching the closing ceremonies I felt a bit the voyeur. I could only imagine the party that continued after the cameras stopped rolling.
I'm winded just thinking about it.
Bernadette Noll lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband Kenny and their daughter Lucy, who is an iron-clad lock for the U.S. women's hockey team in 2018.
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