By Kerry Hayes | Staff Writer
If I have learned anything in all my years of watching the Winter Olympics it is that: 1) every single country in the world, has incredibly hot athletes, and 2) I am more than qualified to judge them on their performance that they have been training their entire lives for, from the comfort of my couch while wearing sweatpants, eating whatever take out I decided to order that night.
During the Olympics, a figure skating, snowboarding, and curling fanatic little goblin wakes up from her three and a half year slumber in the back of my brain just in time to yell at the television when someone doesn’t nail their triple axel jump. I find her constantly screaming, “How could you mess this up?! You let us all down! We were all rooting for you!!” In the past 22 years, I think that it is a fair assumption to say that I’ve cared about snowboarding for a week in total, but suddenly during the Winter Olympics all I can think about is how Shawn White’s new haircut looks amazing and “if he thinks that he’s getting on the podium with anything less than a clean 1620 toe grab, he’s a fool.”
According to a 2008 article from Forbes, it is common for Olympic athletes to train for four to eight years before being considered for an Olympic team. Of course training schedules and the amount of time spent practicing, depends on the athlete, but there is no denying that each athlete works their entire life for the games. Simone Biles, who competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics, has said that she trains for 32 hours a week, with no days off, and trains from 8 a.m. until noon, takes a break for lunch, and then continues to train until dinner. Meanwhile, here I am judging the athletes, even though I’ve never actually been able to make it through an hour long Pilates class without crying. Who do I think I am judging these people who have spent their entire lives training for this one moment? And I’m not alone; every four years about half of the world’s population tunes in to show their patriotism and judge the people who have worked their entire lives for these moments.
The odds of me becoming an Olympic athlete are pretty low at this point, but I’m still holding out hope that maybe someday all those days of ski lessons will pay off. The United States has sent more athletes to the Winter Olympics than any country in the world, but given the population compared to other countries, the odds are still stacked against me, along with my moderate to nonexistent athleticism at this point in my life. The for now, the closest that I’ll get to the Olympic Village, is my family’s 2017 vacation to Lake Placid, New York, and my daily criticisms of the games on NBC.
