Nursing an Olympics hangover

Pardon me if I seem a little out of sorts today.

I appear to be suffering from an Olympics hangover.

For the better part of the last two weeks, I have been channel-surfing (hey, too bad THAT’S not an Olympic sport!) NBC affiliates to keep up with the current athletic events going on in Beijing. Thanks to the network’s wall-to-wall coverage, as well as the Internet for actual “live” results, I have been able to watch at least a little bit of every sport I hoped to see.

I entered the 2008 Summer Olympic Games with a desire to view a couple of non-mainstream sports, badminton and whitewater kayaking, as well as a hoped-for men’s tennis gold-medal match between Spain’s Rafael Nadal and Switzerland’s Roger Federer.

I got to watch Nadal walk in, smiling all the while, and Federer carrying his nation’s flag during the opening ceremony’s parade of nations.

During the first day or two of competition, I watched men’s and women’s badminton matches, and later in the week, I decided mixed doubles badminton is the most action-packed sport around. I know: Badminton! Who knew?

As for the kayaking/canoeing competition, I can only say this: Whitewater, exciting; flatwater, not so exciting ... except maybe right at the finish. Otherwise, the sport doesn’t seem any different from rowing — except that the paddlers are facing forward.

The Nadal-Federer matchup didn’t occur after Fed was taken out in an early round by American James Blake. Which was fine by me because I’m a fan of Blake, even though (or perhaps because?) he will probably never win a Grand Slam title.

Naturally, Blake got booted in the semifinals; still, I was able to see Nadal capture the gold medal in men’s singles (I was up around 4 a.m. last Sunday watching that match) and Federer win the gold in men’s doubles with partner Stanislas Wawrinka.

Along with my must-see events, I managed to check out some of the other sports and found myself wondering:

• How can anyone who slips and falls win any kind of medal in gymnastics (or its Winter Olympics counterpart, ice skating)?

And, on a related tangent:

Now that the gymnastics competition is over, I don’t care whether the Chinese girls were old enough to participate. Those are questions that should have been asked — and answered — long before the Olympics ever started. Same with steroids or any other banned substances.

Once every competitor is back in her home country, it might be gratifying (and even more lucrative) to be awarded the gold medal that she should have won in China. However, the deserving athlete won’t be standing at the top of the podium, listening to her country’s national anthem while the whole world watches.

Getting your medal via Federal Express can’t possibly be quite the same.

• Am I the only one in the world who still isn’t convinced that Michael Phelps actually won the 100-meter butterfly race?

Every time I’ve watched the replay, it still looks, to me, as if Phelps and Milorad Cavic touched the wall at the same instant.

Granted, I’m not complaining. Watching Phelps’ successful quest for eight gold medals was thrilling. I’m not sure I’ve seen an athlete live up to every bit of the hype that surrounded him, going in.

Plus, what do I know about swimming? And besides that, here I am, some 11 hours and hundreds and hundreds of miles away from the Water Cube. It’s not as if I had a poolside seat.

• Wouldn’t it be really cool if a competitor who was too far out of medal contention in any of the diving events would take off running as fast as he or she could on the springboard or platform and do the biggest cannonball possible?

I know if I were a judge, I’d issue points for creativity!

I will leave this year’s Olympics with a renewed sense of appreciation for the spectacle of it all — along with my newfound love of Jamaican sprinters and BMX racing (those wipeouts are spectacular!).

I’m not sure where I was for Sydney in 2000 or Athens in 2004, but I don’t even remember watching the Games those years; now, I can hardly wait for London 2012.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll have to find something to do in place of my early morning and late-night Olympics viewing.

Oh, wait: The U.S. Open tennis tournament starts Monday! That should be good for another two weeks of revelry!

— Diana Winson is editor of The Benton Evening News. You may e-mail her at dianaw@neondsl.com.