By MIKE JONES Associate Editor on Feb 12, 2010, at 3:09 PM Updated on 2/12 at 3:09 PM
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Sometime during the next week or so I will be watching some sports that I only watch every four years – winter sports. My Olympics fever doesn't get all that high in the winter.
Like a lot of people, I rarely watch skiing or speed skating or even hockey until the Winter Olympics come around.
I admire the athletes but, for the most part, I'm simply not all that interested in what they are doing.
And, frankly, it is too intense. In the Summer Olympics people run and jump, swim fast and lift things. If you take out the ribbon dancing and water dancing, it's pretty much running and jumping. Other than pulling a hamstring or bumping your head on the end of the pool, there are few injuries to worry about. Even the boxers take precautions with headgear and only three rounds.
But in the winter sports, there is the possibility of injury in almost everything. People flying down icy hills at 70 to 90 miles per hour. Athletes racing around an icy track looking as if they are about to topple over. People launching themselves off of ramps and moguls of different sizes. It's almost a guarantee that someone will be carted off a slope on a stretcher sometime during the games. Even the hockey games are dangerous. Guys being smacked headfirst into walls and, of course, the fistfights, although like the summer boxers they do have headgear. But they can take theirs off. I suppose some NASCAR fans might watch the Winter Olympics for the same reasons many of them watch auto races -- for the spectacular wrecks.
And of all things, the figure skating also carries its risks. And not just the kind where some thug whacks you on the knee with a pipe. There is jumping and throwing people through the air and landing on thin blades of metal. Some of the outfits the figure-skaters (and I'm talking about the guys) are plenty dangerous, too. The women's outfits, however, I find, well, interesting. And the girls are just so darn pretty.
It's almost too much. But I only have to watch it every four years. And this might be one the few times that it is colder and there is more snow at my house than at the Winter Olympics.
Anyway, go U.S.A.!!
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