Not quite a fever

I usually have Olympic fever, though I admit that the Summer Games are way less interesting to me than the snowbound sports. This year I was all like “eh,” until they actually started, and suddenly I’m deeply into it. I don’t really care if Michael Phelps hits 8 medals (and he’d damn well better be peeing into a cup as well as the pool), and since cycling doesn’t show much bare skin it doesn’t get much coverage, but I feel like NBC has toned down some of the endless stories (because I don’t care whose father just had cancer, whose brother had a near-fatal lawnmower accident, whose high-school sweetheart just returned from MAKE THE STORIES STOP!!!) and focused a bit on the actual sports. The camera work in the Water Cube (which is no cube at all) is uniformly excellent, the gymnastics coverage has been equally good, and even Al Trautwig isn’t spoiling it for me. The beach volleyball has been exciting to watch, and everyone who says it’s just because of the bikinis is really belittling the efforts of some amazing athletes.

Unfortunately, the men’s road cycling race came very early (Sammy Sanchez took it), and so did the women’s (and unfortunately Kristin Armstrong, who was getting some nice recognition in an ad campaign from sponsor Cervelo, had a small crash in the extremely wet conditions), so there’s just the time trials to look forward to tomorrow, and that’s it for the road events.

Stayed up stupidly late last night to watch the men’s gymnastics team struggle for bronze with a display that wavered between awe-inspiring and inept. These mistake-based sports, with subjective scoring based on your screw-ups, take a crazy toughness to shake off the missteps.