Gold Medal in ambivalence

As an additional point to my earlier rant about the idiot elitist I'd like to ask a question about these Olympic Games... for the other 3.95 years of the olympic cycle, does anyone actually follow Shotput as closely as, say, I would follow Football or Cricket? If so, those guys must get so hacked off around this time in the cycle, when all of a sudden their private worlds are shattered by fifteen million people suddenly watching and thinking they understand shotput.

The situation would be just the same as the first time I tried to explain Cricket to an American. Every single assumption they make is just plain wrong. This issue must be redoubled for the hardcore shotput or pole vault fans, since the ingroup and outgroup differ in such wild and huge terms. You and relatively few others around the world follow the sport religiously and then BAM! Suddenly every half wit with a TV is tryiong to judge the skills of your heroes. I bet its really annoying. It would be easy to just lose it and get all elitist here, but WHY?

Surely more people sharing your interests is a good thing? It means more investment and more athletes taking part, which both ultimately will lead to more success and better competitions.

This is why that guy annoyed me so much the other day. More people playing board games is a good thing since more board games will get made as a result - some will suck, some won;t, a few will be great games that would never have been made otherwise.

Grr... Impressive that I managed to get in another moan at his expense while simultaneously being topical. Maybe I should go into journalism....

I also had to laugh today at the people trying to play down the political overtones to these games... THE GAMES ARE POLITICAL! Get over it. If they weren't political, why'd your president turn up? Sigh... seems Putin stole a march on you guys, anyhow, as far as getting news time is concerned.

A