The Misery Is Ending.

Soon it will all be over.  The horror that is the Olympics will leave us alone for a couple of years.  Soon we can go back to paying attention to more important things.  After all, Major League Baseball spring training starts in a couple of weeks.  Unfortunately we'll be menaced by the Summer Olympics sooner than we think.

Not Watching The Puck.

Hockey has been getting a lot of non-sportscast press the past few days in Canada.  It's a combination of the Vancouver Canucks going to the Stanley Cup and the announcement Winnipeg will be the new home for the Atlanta Thrashers, despite the NHL's disdain for the idea.  Yet it's worth remembering that despite the stereotypes a lot of Canadians don't actually watch hockey, like me.  Like soccer I find it a bunch of pointless going back and forth.  I prefer something where the use of strategy is a bit more obvious, like Canadian football or baseball, and other non-hockey watchers have their own reasons for disinterest with the game .  For example there are probably some immigrants or the kids of immigrants who don't bother with hockey, but stick with the traditional sports obsessions of the "old country," whereever that might be. 

Still, even if you don't follow hockey it's not hard to get interested in some of the business goings-on behind the game.  For example why would anyone want a pro hockey team in Atlanta, especially since the first attempt, the NHL's Atlanta Flames of the early '70s, failed and moved to Calgary, where they remain today.  Los Angeles makes sense if only because of its sheer size and the number of Canadian expats living there, especially those in the entertainment business.  There's also the already mentioned antipathy by the current NHL bosses towards any talk of a new team in Canada.  It's only because they pretty much have no choice, other than let the team fold, that they've finally agreed to the Thrashers move.  But watching the actual game itself is something I just won't be doing.

A Bit More Precise.

The World Cup is over.  Despite all the hype it will be interesting to see how well the broadcasts actually did in North America.  Soccer still has a long ways to go here to getting the regular attention other sports get.  Personally I didn't watch because I find soccer has the same flaw as hockey, too much chasing back and forth for not much result.

On the other hand if you watched other sports on TV during the series you probably saw the same Coke ad I saw multiple times.  It revolved around the story of Roger Milla kickstarting the tradition of celebratory dances after scoring a goal.  Oddly the ad refered to him as "an African named Roger Milla."  Why not give his country?  After all I can't imagine having a Formula One themed ad using phrasing like "an European named Michael Schumacher."  A quick check shows that Milla is from Cameroon.  It would be interesting to know why Coca Cola felt a need not to mention his nationality.  Did they figure North American viewers wouldn't have a clue where Cameroon was?

The Rings Are Packed Away.

Another Summer Olympics has come and gone. And I didn't watch more than a minute of it.

I'm not much of a sports fan. My viewing is generally limited to Canadian football, major league baseball, and the combat sports. Although baseball and the martial arts are represented at the Olympics I really couldn't be bothered to watch them. The professional versions provide me enough entertainment without going to the trouble of figuring out the broadcast schedule for the Olympic versions.

I didn't even watch the opening and closing ceremonies, which many people do even if they have no interest in the games. I'm definitely not a fan of overrought and contrived spectacles like those.

The Olympics themselves seem to feel more and more contrived with each passing edition. Consider the fact that the IOC has decided to drop women's softball. This comes only a few years after women's beach volleyball became an Olympic sport. Given what the uniform for the latter is it's hard not to speculate that women's softball was dropped because the uniforms just aren't sexy enough. Gotta get in those TV viewers. If you're a competitor in a less telegenic sport it might be worth your while to find ways to sex it up or you too may be on the way out the door, to be replaced by women's "fitness" competition or something like that.

One of the more amusing disconnects about the Olympics is the closing speech of the head of the IOC, who for years has called upon "the youth of the world" to assemble again in four years for the next Olympics. But not all Olympic competitors are youth. Take Canada's Ian Millar. The veteran equestrian is 61 this year. He's old enough that he could have a grandkid competing alongside him. This is his ninth Olympics. From what I can tell the shooting sports also tend to skew older, which is not a surprise given that they rely on accuracy and not sheer physical ability.

Canada won 18 medals this year, and of course the response was the inevitable. "We didn't win enough medals! What went wrong?" This is the same response after pretty much every Olympics. I suspect that if Canada were to come in second some day we'd hear the exact same whining.

There has been a lot of criticism of the Chinese for doing things like stifling protests and replacing a singer at the opening ceremonies with a better looking one. But really, does anyone think we won't see similar things in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games? You can bet people will be displaced from their homes to make room for Olympic atheletes and specatators, or even just to hide that there are "undesirable" people in Vancouver. You can bet various civil liberties will be tramped on in the name of preventing terrorism or "disruption" of the event. And you can be it's going to cost the Canadian taxpayer a lot more than was predicted.

One thing the Olympics seems to have done for me is generate some visitors. Specifically I've gotten quite a few hits in the last 2 or 3 weeks as a result of my Don Whitman obituary. Not having watched CBC's Olympic coverage I have no idea if this was because they had a tribute to Mr. Whitman, or if it was simply people not knowing he had died and trying to find out why he wasn't there like they expected.

Don Whitman, RIP.

One of the distinctive voices of Canadian televison has been silenced. Don Whitman has died of cancer in Winnipeg at age 71. Born in Herbert, Saskatchewan Whitman worked on radio in Saskatoon and North Battleford before joing the CBC in 1961. Whitman went on to be a fixture of the CBC's sports broadcasts, and his long career included being on hand to report on the terrorist attack on the Israeli residence at the 1972 Summer Olympics and doing play by play when the Saskatchewan Roughriders won the 1989 Grey Cup in the dying moments of the game. His death comes only a month after his former CBC Sports colleague Don Chevrier passed away.

Don Chevrier, RIP.

A familiar TV voice to many Canadian sports fans has been silenced. Don Chevrier died today in his home in Palm Harbor, Florida, apparently as a result of a recently diagnosed blood disorder. He was 69. He worked for various Canadian networks, including CTV and CBC, and was the broadcast voice for the Toronto Blue Jays and Ottawa Senators. This comes on the heels of reports that Don Wittman, another veteran of Canadian sports broadcasting and contemporary of Chevrier's, is currently fighting cancer.

Bad news for some baseball and softball fans. The International Olympic Committee has voted to drop the two sports from the 2012 Olympics. Amongst the factors being blamed are the problems the US major leagues are having with doping, and that baseball supposedly isn't popular enough in much of the world. The latter is rather amusing given some of the other sports that are in the Olympics, and for that matter there being a Winter Olympics when large chunks of the planet don't have any sort of winter sports tradition because they have no winter.