Ordinary Olympians

My sister-in-law Susannah is a world-class gymnast. Despite the fact that her event, tumbling, is much, much more atheletic and arresting than plain old artistic gymnastics, it didn’t make the cut even for exhibition at the Beijing games. That may have something to do with China’s weak performance in the sport. In any case, she didn’t get to go this year. If she had, this is the sort of performance that would have been on display:

Examples like the one above lead to quick conclusions: obviously there’s no chance I could even imagine doing anything like it. But just getting the moves down is just the first step in being a competitive athelete. Reaching perfection is a whole different problem, and doing it consistently is even harder. I know the latter is what proves hardest for Susannah, as it does for most serious atheletes.

Recently, two ordinary guys tried their hands at five olympic sports, filmed their performance, and compared it to actual Olympians. Now, these guys are in pretty good shape, and they couldn’t even come close to Olympic-class performances. Check it out:Watching the coverage of the Olympics over the last day, reflecting on this video and Susannah’s plight, I realized that Olympic coverage is criminally decontextualized.

Earlier today I watched some cycling and rowing. Tonight I watched men’s gymnastics. The television coverage quickly homes in on the breakaway group (cycling) or the favorites (rowing, gymnastics) and pretty much ignores the folks who fall far behind. Because many Olympians from less fortunate countries aren’t able to reach world-class, they are more like us than like the more celebrated competitors. What’s interesting in these cases is the massive discrepancy between the performance of the average and the truly superb athelete. What we end up seeing on television are the favorites and the late-stage competitions. By that point, everyone left is so excellent that the competition is razor-thin. Unfortunately, this also means that the real accomplishments of these athetes is obscured. When everyone runs/swims/pedals that fast or flips/jumps/parries that precisely, there’s no way to comprehend it. The frame of reference is gone.

I know that the very best atheletes understand the mental and physical demands of their sport intuitively. But it’s hard for the rest of us to grasp exactly what these atheletes at the top of their game really have accomplished. That’s bad not only for our appreciation of sport, but also for our ability to appreciate the political and social openness that the Olympics have involved since antiquity. For us as spectators, it is not important that we taste the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. Such is not our place. Rather, what is important is that we witness the massive chasm between our own self-mastery and the ones these atheletes have accomplished. And without that, the Olympics are little more than sponsored spectacle.