Diving in to the Olympic spirit

It’s Olympics time again.

I love the Olympics, the excitement, the competition, the women’s beach volleyball. I mean, er, the competition and the um, ah, anyway.

The Olympics bring out the best in the worlds most dedicated athletes. I have the highest respect for all of the athletes for their hard work and drive to make it to the pinnacle of their chosen sport.

In many of the competitions it is easy and obvious who the winner is, even to the French judge.

In track and field events it is the one who crosses the finish line first, or jumps the farthest or throws an object the farthest, but in many other sports it may not be so clear who the winner is.

Take diving for example. I have watched Olympic diving on many occasions and I have very hard time telling the difference between a good dive and a bad one.

A diver could do a triple twist with a half gainer double double decaf that looks spectacular to me. The only way I could move like that was if I was falling off a cliff, and then I would be screaming the entire way down.

But they do all of these amazing twists and turns and spinning around before they hit the water and make a splash smaller than if a fat dude farts in the shallow end of the pool.

Amazing, that was incredible. Or at least I thought it was, but not the announcer.

After this stunning feat of human acrobatics, the announcer pipes in, “Ooooh what a shame. He really blew that one.”

What? What are you talking about?

The announcer will then spout on about how the diver’s legs were 3.7865 inches too far apart when they hit the water, or their body angle was .0987 degrees off perfect centre.

They are Olympic announcers so I have to assume they know what they are talking about. Often the judges will agree and give the diver a low score, causing the announcer to sit back with a smug look on his or her face and say, “See, told ya it sucked.”

But I guess that is the nature of the Olympics. Not snotty announcers – although they do exist – but the level of competition is so intense even the smallest error can be costly.

That’s why it’s the Olympics, the world’s greatest sporting spectacle, and not a bunch of drunk people doing cannonballs off the diving board.

Announcer: “His form on that cannonball attempt was simply spectacular. I especially enjoyed when he put down his beer and yelled, ‘Hey y’all, watch this.’ Beautiful execution. He could have brought his knees a little tighter, but with a stomach that big I think that is as close as they get.”

Co-announcer: “Yes, I agree. And the splash was massive. He managed to get people sitting five rows back.”

Of course each competitor would have to ‘shotgun’ a beer and do a Tequila shot between each round.

As fun as it would be to watch, I somehow I do not think Bubba and his beer-swilling buddies will make the greatest sporting event of them all.

You have to admit, Redneck Olympics would be, um, interesting.

They could have the six-pack beer chug event, the how-purty-is-my-mullet competition and the always popular ‘Yo-momma’s-so-fat…’ challenge.

But the real competition would be in the who-has-the-least-amount-of-teeth event. I bet that would generate a huge pool of competitors, with the top-ranked competitors coming from the Southern United States of course (and parts of Saskatchewan.)

But the Redneck event is for another place (Southern United States) because right now it is all about England and the real Olympics.

The greatest of the great are putting their skills to the test for honour and country and they deserve all the respect we can give them.

Even Bubba has to be impressed.