Olympics Fever

I hadn't realized what a reflexive sports fan I was, but I just stumbled on an article that said Lindsay Vonn, the top American skier, has an injury that might hinder her medal chances at the Winter Olympics. My immediate reaction was "Oh No!" and then my reaction was, "Wait a second, I care about this because...?" I mean, I know who Lindsay Vonn is. She's very pretty and I've seen her ski on TV a few times, but in the ski gear she looks exactly like everyone else doing the race except she finishes in a couple of tenths of a second less than the other people. This is exciting and important why?

I still remember a column I read by a guy named Lewis Grossenberger, who wrote for Adweek magazine. He was ragging about the Winter Olympics in general, and one of his pet peeves was the skiing. "Downhill skiing? What's so impressive about that? Any idiot can ski downhill. Now uphill skiing would be another story." The other line I remember from that was about luge, concerning which he noted that (1) it's hard to get involved in a sport where you can't tell if they're doing it on purpose and (2) that it would be much more fun if they all went down at the same time.