Winter Games

The purist in me does not like a lot of the new sports in the Winter Olympic Games. These include the aerobatics, and snowboarding (and possibly mogul skiing). Maybe it's just my age. I've lived long enough to see the entire Winter Olympic history, although admittedly not payed attention to every incidence.

It's not that I'm adverse to change. These sports are judged along the same lines as figure skating. Clearly they involve a lot of dedication and athleticism to develop skill and mastery. It makes for good television too. My ambiguity about these sports is perhaps a lack of history. They were developed within the age of wild technological innovation. Boarding grew out of surfing, a sport I liked while growing up partly in San Diego.

I started skiing when I was 10 years old in Alaska. Kept at it throgh my teens by way of a fortuitous move to Bavaria at 15, and became a competetive downhill and giant slalom racer. By 18, I was a fearless, but somewhat reckless speedster. A crash injury during a practice run for a race in Garmisch-Partenkirchen pretty much ended my dream of making my way to the world stage. Jean Claude Kily broke a leg that same year, but went on to gold in the Olympics a few years later.

Alas, I digress from a defense of purity preservation. So much surrounding these new sports seems driven by personality, as if they developed out of the reality TV trend. My theory is is that an ocean surfer decided to take the fin(s) off a sufboard an ski down a slope, much like some Norweigian that accidentaly discovered he could fly by leaning foreward while skiing too fast over a clif by leaning forward.

I might be wrong. I might be right.