In honor of the opening of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, I have decided to write the entire column in Australian slang. Not really, but wouldn't that be bonzer!Anyway, am I the only person who's wondering how this is the Summer Olympics if it's early spring in Sydney and close to early fall here?
NO MATTER. The games are on, and the hype machine is kicking into high gear. I used to follow the Olympics with a passion, but I've gotten a bit cynical lately.
Things have become way too commercialized. For instance, the International Olympic Committee is marketing its own video game for the event (http://www.olympicvideogames.com). The game features a virtual gym section where you can improve the potential of your athlete. You know, they should spin off that feature into a program of its own. Then maybe I could work off my flab in a virtual gym, avoiding the rigors of actual exercise. Like my new take on the old saying goes, "No pain? no pain!"
I shouldn't rain on Israel's parade, though. This country is immensely proud of its athletes and each Olympics gives our patriotism a shot in the arm. Who can forget the celebrations when Yael Arad won the silver medal in judo in the 1992 games in Barcelona?
Or the collective shock and mourning in the aftermath of the massacre of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 games in Munich (http://www.jf-stockholm.org/munich/english.html)? In good times and bad, the Olympics brings our country closer together.
THE ISRAEL Olympic Committee Web site (http://olympic.achla.co.il) is the place to look for local Olympic news, the schedule of events involving Israeli athletes, the delegation's e-mail addresses, as well as historical material. The site's Sydney 2000 section (http://olympic.achla.co.il/sydney2000.html) is where you'll find the best resources. However, you had better go to ulpan first! The entire site is in Hebrew. The sole link to English resources takes you to the Foreign Ministry's Olympic site (http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp/MFAH0hq50), where there is a fair amount of background information but nothing in the way of current events. For up-to-date Israeli Olympic coverage in English, the best place to go is right under your nose, at the Jerusalem Post Web site (http://www.jpost.com).
THE OFFICIAL site of the Olympics (http://www.olympics.com) is an obvious source of previews, news, and results as they happen. Experts are predicting that Olympics.com will register over a billion hits, breaking all Internet records. It is believed that a large portion of that traffic will be from the Americas, where few people will watch the events on live television because of the time difference.
Olympics.com is designed to load quickly without big pictures or finicky animations. It has a little of everything, but has the cold feel of a corporate Web site. It will be interesting to see how the site copes with the traffic, and how smoothly the results are handled. It would be advisable to bookmark some alternate sites in advance. Then, if one site's coverage falters, you can jump to another in a flash.
THE OLYMPICS are a marvelous opportunity to learn more about the host cities and countries. Rather than suggest one or two sites about the land Down Under, I'd encourage surfers to use their favorite search engine to find a sampling of sites. Altavista has a search guide for Australia to help you do just that (http://doc.altavista.com/search-guide/sg-aus.html).
If you're just interested in Sydney, I'd recommend Citysearch's site (http://sydney.citysearch.com.au), a categorized guide of the city's many virtues. Their links to the city's Web cams as well as panoramic pictures of the Olympic venues are a must-see.
I WANT to get more excited about the Olympics, but that cynicism keeps creeping in. For one thing, there are just too many athletic competitions out there. I think everyone can get excited about the Paralympics (http://www.olympics.com/eng/paralympics/home.html) for the physically disabled, and the Special Olympics (http://www.specialolympics.org) for the mentally handicapped. But then you start hearing about competitions such as the Games of the Small States of Europe (http://www.toto.is/oi/gsse97), and sound-alike events like Princeton's Nude Olympics, held outdoors by drunken coeds each January (if you were hoping that I'd link to sites about that here, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.). The word "oversaturation" comes to mind.
Then there's the case of the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics, (http://www.weio.org), which ironically seems more interesting to watch than the real thing. The games, held every July in Fairbanks, Alaska, feature events like the ear pull and the ever-popular Muktuk eating contest. These are the games where spectators cool off with Eskimo ice cream, not to be confused with the American Eskimo Pie sandwich, by the way. Real Eskimo ice cream is made of whipped berries, snow, and seal oil - just like mamma used to make.
WITH all the fanfare and hoopla, it's no surprise that there are groups taking advantage of all the publicity to try to promote their agendas. The Anti-Olympics Alliance (http://www.cat.org.au/aoa) is trying to call attention to "the negative impact of the games and the racism and social injustices in Sydney & Australia."
Hey, it's a free country.
I WATCH them all the time on my television screen and now my computer monitor. Athletes pushing the limits of human ability, jumping, swimming, leaping around the place. And where am I? In my easy chair, cracking open a cold tinny, that's a beer, mate. The only workout I get these days is pushing the mouse around the mouse pad. But I'm going to change all that, now that I've discovered the couch-potato workout (http://www.mylifepath.com/article/iac/100229746).
I'll do a few chair crunches for my stomach, maybe a leg lift or two. Gradually, I'll get in shape for what will surely be the next wacky Olympic event: Freestyle Web surfing!
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