BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE
No better place to watch Games than living room
HILLSDALE, N.J. — Please, take it from me: This is the best dateline of the Olympics. This is my dateline, and if I could be more specific the better one would read like this:
“F ROM THE S OFA OF MY LIVING ROOM IN HILLSDALE, N.J. —”
Trust me, dear reader. I have covered six Olympics, two of them of the winter variety. They are glorious spectacles to see, and sometimes they occur in places that wouldn’t necessarily be at the top of your preferred vacation itinerary. They are a joy to write about, a 16-day adrenaline rush filled with fascinating characters speaking a hundred different languages, fueled by way too many Big Macs and Quarter Pounders, because the Golden Arches are never all that far away from any of us, even a long, long way from home. I love covering the Olympics. I repeat: I love covering the Olympics.
But if you simply love the Olympics themselves, and want to enjoy them? Then, as Dorothy told us long ago, there is no place like home — especially in 2018, especially with hi-def cameras that allow you to experience vertigo with every downhill ski run, that make you hold your breath with every bobsled and skeleton race, that fill you with wonder at the sites of various anonymous Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders skiing and shooting rifles and having a grand old time in the snow engaged in something called “biathlon.”
The Winter Games are an especially perfect vehicle to capture our imagination in a 24/7 TV universe presently dominated with reality TV. The very best of those shows, after all, star people we’ve never heard of before their 15 minutes of fame, showcasing people who, 15 minutes after they are crowned Biggest Losers/Survivors/Great Race Winners/Bachelorettes we will never think about again. The Olympics? A friend of mine once filed a beautiful story about a speed skater (it was probably about Apolo Ohno, but as I mentioned, these names are easily forgettable as soon as they extinguish the torch). Anyway, the article had every element of Olympic spirit in it: The endless hours of anonymous toil, the spilled blood, the failed opportunities, the winning-one-for-mylate-dad/grandmother/aunt/friend and, of course, ultimate triumph.
“That,” I told him the next day, “was a really good story.” He shrugged. “If he came to my house next week and started skating in my backyard,” he said, “I’d pull the shades down.”
But really, that is the best part about the Winter Olympics, isn’t it? The Summer Games are different — mostly involving sports we know about, can relate to, know the rules for. Sure, you can spend a fun day making fun of badminton and team handball, but mostly the summer games are running and jumping and swimming and weight lifting, dovetailing perfectly with the Olympic motto Citius, Altius, Fortius — Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stonger.”
There is a Latin word for “dude” — “Dudas,” of course — which means you could, if necessary, alter the motto to reflect most of the popular new-fangled competitions — the snowboarding and freestyleskiing events that were custom designed for every kid in middle school your parents warned you to
stay away from. And the Latin word for “suicide” is “mortem,” which covers the luge track.
You spend 206 out of every 208 weeks in your life blissfully unaware of these sports. And across a frozen fortnight every four years you can’t look away, mostly because they are sports perfectly designed for television cameras. (But not always, because that doesn’t explain the deadly worm holes that open everywhere sucking in all the folks who while away hour after hour watching curling.) The Winter Olympics are also inter- esting because, unlike the Summer Games, the United States doesn’t win everything, so those victories are hardearned and meaningful. In the 2016 Summer Games in Rio, for instance, the U.S. won 121 medals. Who remembers who finished second? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
It was Great Britain. With 67. You couldn’t hold a five-minute conversation without hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner” blaring somewhere. Maybe it doesn’t exactly make you warm and fuzzy inside to know that Russia topped the medal list in the 2014 Win-
ter Games, but Norway and Canada also finished in second and third place, and you couldn’t possibly find nicer folks anywhere, eh?
(And if Norway and its 5.233 million citizens can compete on an even [and icy, and snowy] playing surface with 300 million Americans? Well, that beats every handicap bowling league you’ve ever been in, am I right?) It does. And it makes for some great TV. Sit back. Relax. Enjoy. Dudus, Mortem, Lectus Diernus. The last? Latin for “sofa.”