Olympic Dreams

The notes are so familiar. When we hear the iconic mi-so-so-do-re-mi-do trumpeting forth from the television, it’s time for the prime-time Olympics coverage of the day. With eighteen days of athletic prowess from Pyeongchang, South Korea on view for the world, Olympic enthusiasts can satisfy their cravings with 176 hours of live coverage on NBC. And for the addicts, streaming offers over 1800 hours of coverage. I’ll stick to the nightly recap myself.

Since I’m not a rookie viewer, I’ve heard of the Lutz, the Salchow, and the Axel before, although I have no clue as to the differences between them. But this year’s Olympic competition has already added some new phrases to my vocabulary, especially from the half pipe event. It took me a bit to figure out that the event takes its name from a huge pipe, cut in half, coated with ice. That spells disaster in itself. As the competitors fly into the air, their gyrations fall into two main categories, either backside or frontside (the direction of rotation of a spin). Often named by the snowboarder who first invents the trick, some of my favorites are the nose blunt, the tamedog, the chicken salad, and the rusty trombone, which is a roast beef and nose grab performed at the same time. My contribution to the lexicon, were I to attempt the half pipe at my age, would be the face plant.

I ice-skated a bit as a kid, both on a makeshift rink in our backyard that my dad constructed out of 2x4s, and sometimes at Ives Pond, across town in Tonawanda. I never did manage to skate backwards, thus ending my fledgling gold medal pursuit before it began. I’ve also never been able to figure out how the skaters can spin with such speed, sometimes nearly 300 rotations per minute. I get dizzy just watching them. Apparently there is a large physics component to skating, another reason I was no Peggy Fleming or Dorothy Hamill.

I chuckled when I read a friend’s Facebook post: “Every Olympic event should include one average person competing for reference.” I could probably pull off the role of the person yelling at the stones in curling, but the thought of hurling down a bobsled run at eighty miles an hour is not on my bucket list.

While my dreams of Olympic fame are long gone, I’m still in awe of the achievements of these young athletes. Watching them march in the opening ceremonies, they looked like typical teen-agers and young adults, healthy and happy, with phones in hand to capture selfies for posterity. Yet behind those smiles are hundreds of stories of grueling early-morning workouts, career-threatening injuries, family sacrifice, and the “agony of defeat,” much more common than “the thrill of victory” over the course of an athlete’s career. For every athlete who proudly stands on the medal platform as the national anthem fills the arena or the hillside, there are thousands whose Olympic aspirations end in a torn hamstring or a lack of resources.

My original intention was to conclude this column on a “proud to be an American” note. The Olympics certainly provide that inspiration, even if we’re not on top of the medal ranking. But then it happened again. This time, Parkland, Florida. I already knew that twenty children from Newtown, CT would never have a gold medal placed around their necks. Now, more of our children will never perform a rusty trombone or a triple Lutz, or even don a graduation robe.

Writing in the New York Times, David Leonhardt puts it bluntly: “Here’s the truth: The teenagers killed in Florida yesterday [Wednesday] had the misfortune of growing up – of trying to grow up – in a country that didn’t care enough about their lives.”

Over the next few weeks, we’ll honor our Olympic athletes with medals and applause, well-deserved due to their incredible achievements. But as we do, I plead and pray that we might also honor the dead of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. In Leonhardt’s words, “May we honor them with anger that does not cease until the unnecessary deaths of children do.”