Photo: tkellyphoto from Flickr

For the fourth Olympics in a row, I intended on blogging the Olympics. I’ve been an Olympic junkie since age two, thus writing about the Olympics for my blog or others seems like a no-brainer. I have Winter Olympic encyclopedias on my bookshelf, and my parents currently hold my collection of taped from TV Olympic coverage VHS tapes.

Athens came and went. I was in grad school and was not able to watch until the last night of gymnastics. Turin, I was in a blogging hiatus, with lack of inspiration and an arena of writer’s block. Beijing, I was on a two week trip for my full-time job.

Vancouver was going to change this. I was going to blog. Maybe not every night, maybe not every event, but I was going to blog. My encyclopedic knowledge of figure skating would be on display. My endless search for blog topics would be over.

I settled onto the couch each night to watch the Vancouver Olympics, computer fired up, notebook next to me. Despite NBC’s lacking coverage, I was memorized as only a lifelong Olympics junkie could be. Turn to MSNBC, there’s hockey. Turn to CNBC, there’s curling. Then all of the skiing aerial events, which are just enough on the edge to be exciting, but don’t feature those hoodlum snowboarders with the long hair and iPods. Then, although the coverage couldn’t touch the hours upon hours I remember from my CBS Olympics childhood, there was the figure skating.

The Olympics are just one of those events where you can’t look away, no matter how magnificently manicured the coverage is, how sweetly sappy the fluff profiles are, or how unethically un-amateur the athletes are. It’s a spectacle of sport, the two weeks every two years where sitcoms that have overstayed their welcome and seventeen versions of the same dramatic series are replaced with hours upon prime-time hours of sports. Weird sports. Popular sports. Unpopular sports. Fallen sports. Growing sports. Sports that only Scandinavian nations play. Sports that Russians rule. Sports that only the US and Canada can compete in. Sports that you have to be under five-foot-three to be successful in. Sports that combine two sports into one. Sports that are just competitive, greased up versions of sledding in Uncle Eddie’s backyard in Ontario.

Writing didn’t happen. I sat, dazed at the television screen, and when the delayed late evening news finally began, I would immediately fall asleep wherever I was. The 7 News logo provoked an a Pavlovian response – when it appeared on screen, my eyes shut without effort and asleep I was. I would wake up in the morning, and realize for yet another night, I didn’t blog. I would resolve that that night would be the night when I finally did.

And through two weeks of the Olympics, that never happened. While I didn’t blog, and thus was a gold medal example of how not to grow or maintain your blog readership, I enjoyed. If you don’t take that time to sit back and enjoy a sporting event every once and a while, without the blogging, Tweeting and analysis, you begin to lose why you even love sports in the first place.

Vancouver, thanks for the refresh.

Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin at the 2008 Olympics

Two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times published a pair of articles contrasting the current careers of U.S. gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin. The Times spoke to the “graceful” Lukin about the three Marta Karolyi run training camps she has attended since the Beijing Olympics, and her agent about the offer she turned down from Dancing with the Stars. They then profiled a Dancing with the Stars rehearsal that Johnson, not necessarily renowned for her artistic ability as a gymnast, was participating in, quoted her mother as saying as Johnson never wants to leave the Left Coast, and mentioning that serious gymnastics training doesn’t seem to be in the cards at the moment.

The short, less artistic little kid looking to take advantage of her 15 minutes of Olympic provided fame.  The lankier-only-by-comparison, more artistic, older teenager who looks to stay in the sport.

One would think we were back in 1998.

Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan at the 1998 Olympics. (Photo: Jamd.com)

Following the 1998 Winter Olympics, similar articles were written about Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski. Graceful and lankier-looking Kwan, disappointed by her Olympic silver medal, had not made a concrete decision about whether or not to remain figure skating, but kept her options open and continued to train. Lipinski, the gold medalist at the Nagano Games, the shorter, less artistic and younger one, was seemingly led by her mother and agent to take advantage of every professional opportunity afforded her due to her medal finish, and stopped training for Olympic competition. (Years later, the figure skating community would learn that Lipinski had quietly battled serious hip injuries, which would eventually end her ability to skate on even the show circuit, during her Olympic season as well.)

Led by such articles, many jumped onto the Kwan bandwagon, thinking of Lipinski as the less-talented, less-determined, less-serious athlete. Kwan was persistent and continued on, while Lipinski seemingly let the promise of a payday determine her next steps. If Dancing with the Stars was around in the fall of 1998, and both skaters were offered the chance to join the cast, one could surmise that it would be Lipinski competing for the mirrored ball trophy and Kwan declining the invite in order to attend training camps.

But a decade later, both athletes are nearly unknown and having to pursue other areas outside of their sport – Kwan, the field of international relations (although according to the Washington Post, she may consider a comeback), and Lipinski, acting and voiceover work. Taking advantage of the time immediately following the Olympics, in either way they did, gave them a cushion to fall back on once their time as athletes ended.

And now we are in 2009, and the two teenage stars of the Summer Olympics find themselves beginning to be portrayed in a similar light. Is Johnson wrong for taking high profile mainstream media opportunities while she can? In a report this week, it was reported that Dancing with the Stars participants make $200,000 for the season.  Is Johnson, a 17 year old who doesn’t know a world outside of gymnastics and probably can not even think about what she could have a career in as an adult that does not involve the sport, wrong for earning that while she can? Is Lukin, who has also taken advantage of a few lesser profile mainstream media opportunities (modeling and a small appearance on Gossip Girl) right for continuing to subject herself to the svengalis that are the Karolyis and continue on a path towards the World Championships later this year? Both paths take into consideration that these girls are in the “twilight” of their competitive careers,  but one has decided to continue on the known path for at least one more year to boost her resume a tad more, while the other realizes that her time as a gymnast is winding down, and that it may be prudent to take advantage of what she can while she can.

Essentially, aren’t Johnson and Lukin, like Kwan and Lipinski before them, just two teenagers who are taking advantage of the comparative variety of opportunities available to them, given the limited scope of their life experiences and the lack of relative choice in their opportunities at other points in their life? Although the paths may vary, both take advantage of the limited amount of time they have to either compete in their sport or cash in on notoriety gained from their sport. And when you’ve been doing the same exact thing since you were three, training for a singular goal since you were three, and dreaming of stardom from that activity since you were three, can you blame them for taking advantage of the opportunities available to them while they can?