Olympics Games XXII Are Over

The XXII Olympic Games are now over, but certainly not history to the many athletes who competed in Sochi. Memories will go on for years and years.

For this blogger, it was distressing that results were counted by national accomplishments, as though the athletes were somehow cyphers adding to a country's accomplishments . . . that an athlete was not honored just because they won a gold, or a silver, or a bronze, or even didn't win a think but still bravely competed . . . that NBC chose to politicalize the games almost constantly commenting on the host country and Russia's president (thank you. Bob Costas).

Speaking of NBC . . . Meredith Vieira's and Matt Lauer's commentary was weak, even banal . . . admitting to not knowing who the Woirld Wide Web (www.) inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was . . . describing Madagascar as a country associated with a few animated movies . . . introducing Australia as a former penal colony . . . Costas' joking about a former despotic dictator, Idi Amin, to describe Uganda. Perhaps NBC's long-time sweetheart relationship with the US Olympic Committee needs revisiting?

But back to the games. Granted, some teams had to be identified as US, or Russian, or Dutch, or Swedish - - they were teams, but still made up of individual - team athletes. A disclaimer here, as one who has duel citizenship, it was nice to watch Canada win hockey! Athletes from more countries ever before won medals, broadning the games range.

But when a luge comes down the run as a medal winner, the announcer's cheer that "And the US wins another silver"; no, Matthew Antione won the silver! Let's get our values straight.

A week ago a friend emailed me, "We all would like to see Canada bring home gold, but that is not the main thing - it is the work that these athletes have put in to make it to this elite level and the way they conduct themselves, win or not win. There are no losers in the Olympic Games." 

Now the Sochi Olympics are history are history. They are in our memory. They were great. They were cool. They were hot.

And they belong to the athletes, those who won and those who did not win, alike!