We were watching ski cross and my cousin’s six year old son had numerous questions about the format of the race. He was also concerned with who to cheer for should Canada be bumped from medal contention. He was pretty enthusiastic about all of it. On the more cynical end of things, another much older cousin dismissed the olympics as nothing more than “a huge gathering of psychologically damaged people.” This was the funniest take. But I was more interested in trying to view it through the eyes of my less world-weary young cousin.
This will probably be the first Olympics he remembers. I say that because I vaguely recall having similar questions during the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994 when I was around his age. I remember watching speed skating and trying to figure out *how* it all worked. I also remember proclaiming my allegiance to China, we all like to experiment a bit when we’re younger.
BUT, had I been born five or six years earlier I don’t think I would have felt such freedom of association in terms of which country to root for. Five or six years earlier and I would have caught the olympics during the cold war — a much more interesting era — the golden era in my mind and one of the few silver linings of the Cold War … but after that?
After that they became a reasonably interesting television event. During the Olympics the TV became more like how the radio is in some households — always on, but only sometimes are you really paying attention.
But this winter olympics was my second without cable television and they’ve pretty much disappeared from my radar. It makes me wonder — as people continue to cut their cable subscriptions, will the Olympics become less meaningful? Or maybe this has already happened.
I certainly didn’t bother seeking out any streaming opportunities, nor did I click on any write ups about what was happening or even look at the medal standings. I’m sure many people still care, but my gut feeling is that the end of cable TV will be a loss for the Olympics as well. That one night of viewing made me curious about what the olympics will be like in my young cousin’s eyes 8 or 10 years down the road — will he still watch? Unless there are some scary developments in world politics, I don’t think I will.