Dave Reardon: Despite the pandemic, Olympics are a must-see

ASSOCIATED PRSES
Players for Australia’s softball team, which has four players who played at the University of Hawaii, practice at Yokohama Baseball Stadium in Yokohama, Japan.

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ASSOCIATED PRSES

Players for Australia’s softball team, which has four players who played at the University of Hawaii, practice at Yokohama Baseball Stadium in Yokohama, Japan.

The unprecedented happens on a regular basis at the Olympics, where the spectacular rules and world records are snapped by the dozens.

It’s two weeks packed with the rare instances when words like “amazing,” “awesome” and “epic” are correctly used to describe performances.

While a Home Run Derby or slam dunk contest will often elicit such responses, here’s the difference: In the Olympics, there’s none of the sensory overload of repetition. Because it’s a 40-ring circus, there’s always something very exciting going on, someone surging past the rest of the world’s best at what they do.

Some of this is due to the skill and magic of video editing, and the choices we now have via technology. Viewers are spared the nap-inducing nuances of dressage and the middle 25 miles of the marathon (although the junkies of various sports can get some or all of what they want via streaming).

Not all Olympic moments are created equally. Watching Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce cover 100 meters faster than some of us do the 5 meters to our refrigerators is more interesting than a badminton match. And I’m OK with watching the best badminton players in the world do their thing — once every four years.

I never imagined I could do anything well enough to even dream of making it to the Olympics. But they did have a big impact on me when I was 15 and not yet fully introduced to the Wide World of Sports, despite the weekly TV show of that name.

We had just three or four channels, and if the Internet existed yet it was only used to spy on the Russians. Watching the Olympics was how Americans my age learned there is more to sports than baseball, basketball, football and hockey (these days we can add MMA and GTA V to that list.)

Some of us even discovered an athletic endeavor that was a better fit than the one we loved but didn’t love us back.

In 1976, Bruce Jenner won the Olympic decathlon, and the Olympic decathlon was still a very big deal. Jenner’s performance, and the way Edwin Moses so coolly dominated the hurdles, got me excited about track and field. It took away the sting of being cut from the JV baseball team, which had seemed like the end of the world.

Speaking of the Russians and the end of the world, the Olympics might have saved the planet. Back then we didn’t have cold brew, we had the Cold War. At school, you were trained that if a certain alarm sounded you were to ball up under your desk because the Russians were coming, the Russians were coming — or at least their ICBMs were coming.

International sports was a surrogate for total war between the superpowers. Although the University of Hawaii’s Tom Henderson and the rest of the U.S. Olympic basketball team in 1972 might disagree, a silver medal seemed a much better outcome than mutually assured destruction.

It was not all good. Also in ’72, we kids learned the word “terrorism” when at the Olympics, 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage and killed. The stage was meant for peaceful competition and the world’s greatest athletes pushing each other to new heights. It was stolen and converted to a platform for attention-seeking murderers.

The sadness and resignation in Jim McKay’s voice when he said, “They’re all gone,” still resonates. But eight years later, Al Michaels’ “Do you believe in miracles?” after the U.S. ice hockey upset of the Russians replaced it as the most well-known call from any Olympics.

Miracles? I believe, because three years ago this happened:

At the opening ceremony of the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, the North and South Korean teams marched under the same flag as a show of unity against the threat of nuclear weapons. The easing of tensions even included a combined women’s ice hockey team. The Koreans lost all five of their Olympic games, but that didn’t matter.

I’m no public health expert, and won’t pretend to know if these Olympics should have been canceled or postponed again because of COVID-19 and its variants. My gut makes me think it is very risky, and I know big money is a big reason why they were not halted. And I certainly don’t blame the people of Japan for their protests.

But looking at it through other lenses, narrow and wide, we need the Olympics more than ever.

We don’t have a 38th parallel in the U.S., but it’s no secret we’re divided, and there’s nothing like Olympic gold to help bring us back together, at least a little bit.

For Hawaiians, focus on Carissa Moore’s mastery of the waves can tell the world the true story of surfing’s origins.

People around the planet deserve a respite from the despair and isolation caused by the pandemic.

And, of course, the participants, because we all know world-class athletic talent comes with a “best when used by” stamp.

Maybe it’s not quite time yet for the entire world to come out and play, or even watch in person, just like before. But I can’t wait to watch two weeks of the world’s best at their best, even if they’re doing it from a bubble.