I never feel more fat than when the Olympics are on TV. To say I don’t watch sporting events often is an understatement. I think my indifference has to do with a lingering PTSD from going to a school where they enforced hours of mandatory group sports that left me mortally fearful of an approaching ball. The truth is I was never into team sports because even as a pudgy kid I could see them for the war games they are. And, like the Model United Nations event, designed to bring out the monsters within. I much preferred the comparative binary civility of tennis, or better yet the solitary grace of skating. And so, other than a cursory interest in the winner of Wimbledon or skimming the headlines of a world cup victory, I don’t really keep up with the world of athletics.
Except for the Olympics. That one wonderful two-week period every two years where we celebrate the strength and endurance of the human mind and body in a pageant so wonderful that even I – staring at the TV in stained sweatpants surrounded by crumbs of garlic bread – dream of what it would be like to be a professional athlete. There is very little about the Olympics that I don’t love watching. I love the drama of athletes making it to their national Olympics teams; I love the free-loving atmosphere and general aspirations to global peace that the Opening Ceremony gives the world; I love the costumes, the commentary, the harsh judges and the mad fans. I love it all.
Lugers at the Sochi Winter Olympics
The fact that it happens every four years makes the international summer games precious. But we often forget that because of some bizarre divorce settlement clause, every alternative even four years we get to see the Winter Olympics, as we do now in Pyeongchang in South Korea. I’ve been glued to the TV since the torch-lighting ceremony, which is much more dramatic against snow, to be honest. I dare even the most hard-hearted of you not to tear up while watching the teams of North Korea and South Korea entering under one flag for this year’s opening ceremony. The Summer Olympics is usually a much bigger event than the currently ongoing Winter Games for the simple reason that few countries in the world play winter sports. It favors mainly overwhelmingly white countries where they play in the snow a lot (you are unlikely to find a ski slope full of Olympians in Barbados for example) and it is expensive to maintain ice and snow if they are not naturally occurring, except in Dubai which just likes showing off.
But let’s be honest here. Even if you live on an iceberg in the middle of a freezer, you probably haven’t heard of many of the sports in the Winter Olympics aside from skating and skiiing. Who knew that there is a long-rink and a short-rink skating? What is luge and when did it become a thing to send people hurtling down ice slides dressed like members of the Blue Man group? Most of what you know about a sport comes from the commentators on TV, individuals who presumably spent the last four non-televised years following the world of luge (luging? lugeing? Lugination?) with a fierce dedication. Did you know, for example, that one of the members of the Luge team from Poland is actually a Swede who was convicted of spying for the Russians, a fact that only came out when his girlfriend saw him kill a man with nothing but a bottle of nail polish remover?
Is that fake news? How do you know? You don’t know. No one does, because up until 15 minutes ago you didn’t even know luging (I googled it) was an activity. So it is with most of the sports in Winter Olympics. While on a break from work the other day I got deeply invested in the finals of Curling. In that I was actually screaming at the TV when the German team was faulted instead of the Swiss. It was only once the medals were awarded that I saw my gnarled reflection in the mirror and regained my mind. Do you know what Curling is? It’s basically bowling and sweeping on ice. One person throws a smooth rock down a plane of ice, and another follows the rock with a broom while polishing its path for no apparent reason. It’s amazing.
The truth is I was never into team sports because even as a pudgy kid I could see them for the war games they are
But no matter how silly or obscure the sport may be, no one watching these athletes can deny the dedication and single mindedness it must have taken to get to the top of their fields (or brooms). It’s a marvel, and inspirational. That feeling, the one where you think you can do anything: that is a gift of the heroes of the Olympics that draws so many millions of us back to it.
But as we watch the world athletes this week, it’s important to remember that not all heroes wear medals in this world. Here in Pakistan we are mourning the passing of the human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir, who died suddenly earlier this week. She was, in every sense of the word, a warrior. She fought for the rights of the abused and disenfranchised long before it became a hashtag. She stood up to forces far more powerful than any of us will face in our lives, and stood by her principles with the steely determination and fierce bravery that made her an icon. Her passing leaves a void in our midst not only because of her staggering personality, but also because those of us who do not fight for the light as she did felt safer because we watched her do it, in the same way we watch the Olympians. May she rest; and may her memory inspire us not to.
