The Olympics --- A Foriegn Perspective

I learned during the Olympics that no matter how much I love NBC's reporting on politics they are dumb and stupid.

All of this anger comes from the fact that NBC does not allow people outside the USA to access their live or recorded video of the Olympics, which is really stupid. Here in Chile, when they only have a handful of people going to the Olympics they have no need or desire to show the Olympics to their population, only the sports in which they are participating or important international events like Michael Phelps' 7th win.

So, when the Olympics started, I assumed that Chile broadcasting like USA broadcasting would play the opening ceremonies in the eventing. WRONG. They only play it live, which means that it played at 8am EST and never again. Reportedly they did play it at some ungodly hour like 2am or something... but still. I missed the most amazing opening ceremonies in history because I was still sleeping.

I never saw my favorite sports like swimming, diving, rhythmic gymnastics, or water polo... and I felt like a failure.

It is weird, I was talking to my host family about the Olympics and they said that you have to first qualify for the Olympics before you can go, which is why Chile only had a few athletes attend. They said it goes by region, that many south American countries have to duke it out before they can even go to the Olympics. I guess we have Olympic trials, but we have so many people that represent our country at the Olympics that I assumed that everyone had as quite a few athletes as well. I believe Chile had around 25 athletes at the games. I also don't think they won a medal.

The Olympics are definitely a bigger deal in the United States. I still maintain that we beat China in the total medal count and I think that it is pathetic that they put their money on sports that will get them more medals for the sole purpose of winning the gold count. I think that total medals won is much more important because it says, we help all of our athletes become better individuals and we recognize everyone's strengths and weaknesses. If China really is that worried about medal counts then maybe they are 'making up for something' as in making up for the millions of people that are in absolute poverty, making up for their horrible environmental standards, making up for their horrible human rights record, making up for their mistreatment of workers... and the list goes on. If my country loses the gold medal count, but wins the overall medal count because we focus on everyone... I respect and believe that my country is better. It really doesn't matter anyways because a medal count does not mean that you have become a developed country... its the statistics that make that true or false and looking at the statistics China is a ways off.