Chuck Klosterman vs The Olympics: I’m guessing the coverage of the Olympics in America is very different to its coverage here. In Britain, where the only thing medal hopes usually end up beating is medal experiences, the very joy of the Olympics is that it is a sporting event expressly designed for our old friend ‘the neutral’. An enormous array of sports, many of which you barely understand – you’re positively encouraged to judge athletes according to their name, or their style or tracksuit, or the shifty looks they give on the warm-up track, or whatever you want. Or just do your best to appreciate the sport as sport before it slips from the limelight for another four years.
(This was especially true of Sydney 2000, where the only times I ended up watching it I was either drunk or hungover – ‘all sports should be like this’, I remember deciding.)