It’s February. The 2010 Winter Olympics are only weeks away, and I’m not even excited, not even a tiny bit. Why? well it’s plain and simple. Winter Olympics suck!! for several reasons.
First off, I want to take a few seconds here and announce that I don’t believe winter sports should even be qualified as ‘Olympic-worthy’. I mean really, if African’s can’t do it, then it’s not a sport. OK that was a joke, but it gets the point across. In all seriousness, how many countries in the world have the luxury of competing in winter sports? Not very many. If my memory serves me correctly, Olympic sports should be worldly. Take for example, curling: really? Curling is an Olympic sport? What’s next? poetry? Same goes for pretty much every single one of the winter Olympics events. There are just not enough countries in the world that pay enough attention or budget for these sports. I mean there are athletes from Ghana and Morocco and Iran and Pakistan, but not in a million years will any of them get on the podium. So truthfully, these so called “Olympics” sports have half a dozen of competing countries, in every single category.
Another reason why I don’t like the winter Olympics is they cost too much. I mean we’re talking about billions of dollars here. Money that was never well spent. It’s no secret that the money being brought into the city by visitors will never match the money that was spent on the Olympics. Some argue that it’s a good thing for the city of Vancouver in the long run, because it puts Vancouver front and center and will attract more tourism in the long run. Seriously? Vancouver is already one of the most visited cities in Canada, and certainly doesn’t need a multi-billion dollar tourism campaign. I agree that some things are beneficial to us, like the Sea to Sky construction (which again turns out to be quite useless for the Olympics itself, since individuals are not allowed to drive up to whistler during the Olympics) and some additional jobs that were created, but all of these things could have been done with a much lower budget.
Bottom line is that the Winter Olympics are just not that popular. OK I’m not a huge fan of winter games myself, but I’m not the only one am I? I don’t think the level of excitement for these games will be anywhere near what people experience during summer Olympics. Someone told me that all the visitors that will be here for the events are already here, but I keep failing to spot any of them. When I was in Germany for the World Cup, you could see visiting soccer fans every other inch.
Like one of my friends said: “It’s a 17 day party that will take us 70 years to pay off”.
Cheers,
froozle
