Written by Blake Mathews
I’ve heard people say that the Olympics have lost relevance in the postmodern world. After all, what does it mean to really be “the best in the world?” What’s the point of all that training, all those years of dedication and sacrifice spent to win a piece of metal that ancient civilizations decided to saddle with arbitrary value? Or perhaps the Olympics lost their magic power when people quit believing in magic … and started believing in steroids, corrupt French judges and Chinese gymnasts that look a little too young to be there.
Whatever the reason is, it’s been popular to say that no one watches the Olympics anymore. Until this year, for some reason. Maybe because I’m in college now, and the last time I was in college during the Winter Games, they were in Turin, and no one knows where Turin is. But this year has seen a revival of Olympic interest, and this makes me happy.
Sadly, I’ve been a little too busy lately to actually keep up with Vancouver. I know I missed Shaun White taking over the world on the snowboard half-pipe, and I heard the Americans didn’t really show up in pairs figure skating. A lot of people have showed enthusiasm for curling, but I think it’s all a farce. The enthusiasm, not curling. Curling is like the Spongebob Squarepants of winter sports: it’s cool to think it’s cool, especially if you really think it’s silly deep down inside. So ironic, I know. Irony is especially cool.
But I did find a moment to watch the Olympics a few days ago, and if you’ve ever randomly tuned in during the early afternoon, you’ll know there’s a good chance of seeing something you didn’t even know was a sport. I was in the Caf, watching the mounted televisions, and I beheld a sport that I am now committed to following. It looked at first like cross-country skiing, which at first looks like a war crime to me, but then I noticed the object strapped to the lone skier’s back. This Olympian was out on the slopes with a rifle.
My curiosity was further piqued by the name of the event: Women’s 10 km Pursuit. I had to know what she, with her skis and her firearm, was pursuing. Big game? Bigfoot? James Bond villain henchmen? Other Olympians? This bizarre combination of activities is apparently not something you can just stumble into. With a little bit of research I found out that the event is actually called the biathlon, which is ancient Greek for “you’re going to hurt someone doing that.” Actually, the sport is Norwegian in origin and evolved from one of their military drills. Participants ski around a cross country track and stop occasionally to shoot at stationary targets. Missing a target means extra laps or time added on to your score. The armed skier with the lowest time wins, and we all go home wishing that event could have been a lot cooler than it actually was.
The fact that there’s a summer biathlon, where cross-country running replaces skiing, is both encouraging and a little bit unnerving. Not that I’ve got anything against arming track kids, but if climate, geography and culture can’t stop the spread of the biathlon, I just know that somewhere in my home state of Texas some good ol’ boys are out riding their four-wheelers across someone else’s property, shotguns strapped to their backs, and one is saying to the other, “Ya know, mebbe someday this here’ll be an Olympic spurt.”
