No Shortage of Stories at Athens Olympiad

On Saturday night the Opening Ceremonies in Athens, Greece will inaugurate the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad and if you haven’t been in a coma, you’ve been noticing virtually every major news publication has been printing up preview issues and articles out the yin-yang leading up to the Games. That’s because there are so many storylines heading into Athens that not watching the Olympics for the next to weeks should be socially unacceptable.

But Americans shouldn’t need bomb threats, or BALCO scandals or under-performing pro-basketball players to turn their dials to the NBC family of channels. Not for the Olympics.

Behold, the beauty of amateur athletics. No money. Just a dream. A singular purpose. These athletes are here to prove that they’re the best in the world, authenticated by the presence of a gold medal hanging from their neck. These are athletes like Michael Phelps who is questing to be outdo the famed Mark Spitz as the most decorated swimmer in history. Tela O’Donnell, Sara McMann, Toccara Montgomery and Patricia Miranda are trying to put their sport of women’s wrestling on the map. Meanwhile supermodel-looking Jennie Finch and fireballer Lisa Fernandez try to maintain American dominance in softball.

Compared to professional athletes, these men and women seem like everyday people who can pull off the unthinkable, all of them with impressive back stories paving the way to Athens. For one, Miranda is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford and has been accepted at Yale Law School.

The U.S. military will even be represented by marathoner and 10,000m runner Dan Browne (a captain in the Oregon National Guard and 1997 West Point grad motivated by the deaths of two classmates in Iraq), fencer Seth Kelsey (2003 Air Force graduate) and skeet shooter Todd Graves (a member of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit at Fort Benning, Ga. Since 1984).

And I don’t care what the event is. In the Olympics even the most mundane events seem astounding. How can you not admire the tri-athletes? The decathletes? The marathoners? I mean, who would willingly participate in an event that KILLED the first runner ever to do it? All of them amaze me, both for their heart and for how their skill can make an eternally dull sport interesting.

One of my favorite Olympic memories occurred during the table tennis tournament of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. I had the good fortune to “get stuck” with table tennis tickets and watched in absolute awe as one competitor flew head long over the outer barrier wall and successfully returned a shot by bending the ball around the net. But rather than finish him off, his opponent kept bending the ball almost 90-degrees over the net, off the table and towards his opponent, now standing in the adjacent court. I can’t even begin to comprehend the physics involved in that.

One of my favorite athletes ever was 4-foot-11 Halil Mutlu from Turkey who won weightlifting gold in Sydney by hoisting 368 pounds, one pound shy of three-times his body weight, above his head. How can that not be inspirational? I cramp up trying to bench my own weight.

And if you like underdog stories, you just can’t beat the Olympics. Who can ever forget the Miracle on Ice? Not only did Herb Brooks’ crew knock of the commies, they ousted the Soviets from Afghanistan and freed the hostages in Iran. It’s true. Just watch the “Do You Believe in Miracles?” documentary and you’ll see.

Who will be this year’s underdog champs? Could it be the Greek baseball team that didn’t exist more than a year ago? The Iraqi soccer team? Or the Italian hoops squad who has already beaten the American Not-Quite-So-Dreamy-As-The-First-Three-Dream-Teams Team?

But the best part of the Olympics, and for that matter all of amateur athletics is the sheer emotional displays, the tears of joy or defeat following that pivotal moment that these athletes have been training for with pre-dawn wind sprints, mile runs or laps in the pool. There’s no consolation prize beyond a silver medal, no million dollar contracts (for most). It all comes down to one defining moment. Now that’s drama.

Like every Olympics, this one is chock full of great story lines, even beyond those of the terrorist threats and constructions delays. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find a new inspirational hero. Maybe you’ll just smile or shed a tear. But you won’t know if you don’t watch.