I love the Olympics.
I always have. It goes back to
the days of ABC’s Wide World of Sports
which aired every Saturday from 1961 to 1998.
The intro which was written by Stanley Ralph Ross was the best. “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant
variety of sport…the thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat…the human drama
of athletic competition….”
It was always a surprise which sport would be aired
each Saturday and even on days when I was cocooning in my room, a walk through
the living room could become a few hours!
ABC rarely, if ever, aired football, baseball or basketball (unless it
was the Globetrotters!). They aired ski
jumping, bowling, horse racing, badminton, gymnastics, surfing, NASCAR and those
ever-spectacular sports such as log rolling and rattlesnake hunting. I learned to appreciate the beauty of sports
and the efforts of the athletes but, most importantly, I learned to be open to and
fascinated by other cultures. I still
love sports and I watch ESPN virtually all the time. But for its massive amount of air time, its
focus on the big three sports saddens me.
But every two years I look forward to the sports that broadcast TV has
forced into obscurity. I feel honored to
again witness the human drama of the athletes - the thrill of victory and the
agony of defeat!
Wiki Commons photo by "Jeff M for Short"
