A Quick Note of the Olympics

I haven’t really ever seen the Olympics in the States, which is strange considering I’ve lived there for 9 years now. I don’t remember anything about the Sydney Olympics back in 2000, the 2004 Olympics in Athens were watched mainly from England during summer holidays, and the 2008 Olympics most recently in Beijing I’ve seen completely from the Australian view. It was interesting to say the least, the Australians having a completely separate set of stars for the Olympics than the States; names like Libby Trickett and Stephanie Rice dominated the first week (of which I saw ms tricketts gold-medal swim about 5 times in one day—I can only imagine how many times Phelps was seen in the states). One thing that has been good is that a number, if not most of the sport have been live. Australia being 2 hours ahead of Beijing meant that the Olympic day started at 11am and went live pretty much till 11/12 or even 1 at night. In the first week I heard the Australian national anthem more times that I ever cared to hear it seemed like (this is after never hearing it before in my life). Then the second week began with a number of jabs at the British for overtaking them in the gold medal count (as one commentator said, mainly on their bottoms including biking, sailing and rowing). And the second week concluded with one Australian doing a funny walk for 50 km and getting praised for it, and one overhyped BMX athlete (Kamikaze) failing completely. And now, as I watch the final clip montage from the past two weeks I’m looking back on an Olympics that was covered fairly well for just two channels (on freeview)—although they did break to make sure they covered the aussy footy.
Now bring on 2012--London!