Team USA

I can't help getting caught up in the Olympic spirit! It's so overwhelming. The opening ceremonies might have made me cry they were so beautiful. (Tear, sniff!) The thing is, today I was watching the gymnastics tournament with my family, and our girls did not even look happy to be in China! They were practically glaring at the camera! If I was in China, I would be really happy. And if I was as in-shape and flexible as those teens, I would be extatic! I would have two amazing reasons to have a huge, sky-brightening smile on my face. But, man, the US ladies definately protrayed the term "ice queen" today. (To their credit, they looked a lot more at ease when the competition was over.)

Which brings me to my next point. Has anyone else noticed that whenever you watch an single-person event (gymnastics, diving, swiming, track, etc), the commentators love to tell you about these poor athlete's ailments right before they perform/compete? And then, eerily, the athlete seems to do a worse job than they had hoped. It's as if the athletes can hear the commentators and the reminder of their injury preoccupies them throughout the event. You know what it is?! It's just bad Kharma! Those commentators should be required to say something positive for every negative/injury-related comment they make! Hey, if I was one of those injured athletes I would not be able to compete; I would definately be a wuss. But they seem to compete no matter what has happened to their limbs. And who can blame them?! It's the Olympics! Still, I would hate to be a close friend or relative of one of the athletes and hear, "Johnny has recently recovered from a broken leg, which was caused by a tragic car accident and he has only been out of the coma for a few months. To make matter worse, he has come down with flu-like symptoms. That certainly won't help him in today's qualifying race." Man, if I was the kid's mom, I would probably faint on the spot.

But, back to what I was saying before...Tonight was one of the gymnastics qualifiers. I am certainly not an authority on gymnastics, but there is one rule that I just don't understand. One that seems really stupid. When a gymnast does a floor exercise, if they go out of bounds, it is like a HUGE mistake! (And, of course, it is accentuated by the commentators!!!) And you know what I think?! Why do they even HAVE an out-of-bounds?! It's GYMNASTICS! The blue-spongy-springy floor seems to extend at least one foot beyond the out-of-bounds, so what's the big deal? It's not like basketball or baseball, where there are other players involved. There's one person, and at the end of the out-of-bounds step, she's always still on the blue spongy-springy-floor. Maybe the commentators will explain it to us during the next gymnastics event. They would only be able to do it after they told us about all of the team's injuries before the match starts.