August 6, 2018 marks the ten year anniversary of this blog. I will re-post my first two posts on the two Olympic games I was selected to volunteer at the 1996 Atlanta games and 2002 Salt Lake City games. I will include pictures from my time volunteering at these games on the reposts of the first two posts I ever made on this blog. This blog is 75% news and Olympics results oriented and 25% opinion with Olympic updates and athlete updates making up a big percentage of this blog when the Olympics are not on.
Why blog the Olympics? To me, the Olympics means the coming together of the world to compete in sport.The games are supposed to bring the world together and that is great for humanity to put aside their differences and compete side by side with other nations. A great example of this is when two enemies, North and South Korea competed as one nation at the 2018 Pyeongchang games.
As great as the Olympics are, there are some downfalls. The cost for nations to host the games is skyrocketing. The 1996 Atlanta games had a $1.7 billion US dollar budget. Host cities now have a four to five billion US dollar budget. The total cost of the 2014 Sochi games was $50 billion US Dollars.
This includes infrastructure projects as well. In bidding for the 2024 summer games a year ago, two cities were awarded the games(Paris and Los Angeles) as several dropped out. Boston was the US city selected to host games but the opposition was too great and the USOC and Boston jointly pulled the plug and Los Angeles was chosen by the USOC to be the official US candidate city and finally selected by the IOC to host the 2028 summer Olympic games. For the 2022 winter games only two cities bid as several cities that wanted to host dropped out. Voter opposition is the number one reason and several host cities cited cost as the reason to drop their bid to host an Olympics.
I started this blog just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics to mainly cover USA athletes in sports that I follow year round. For the summer games I follow track and field, swimming, diving, gymnastics, women's soccer, basketball, indoor volleyball and beach volleyball. Those eight sports are equal to close to 12 hours a day of watching the Olympics. I do try to watch wrestling, rowing, weightlifting and fencing during the games but the majority of time is spent watching the eight sports I follow regularly. I watch hours and hours of the Olympic trials of swimming, diving, and track and field. There are about 22 days straight of summer Olympic games trials, which is more than the Olympic games which are 17 days. For the winter games, I only follow figure skating. I do watch some curling(NBC Curling Night in America). I've expanded to watching the Olympic trials in speed skating and snowboarding for the winter games.
On August 6, 2008 I started this blog. Since then I have covered six Olympic games, 2008 Beijing, 2010 Vancouver, 2012 London, 2014, Sochi, 2016 Rio and 2018 Pyeongchang. Since the summer Olympics are so big(over 10,000 summer games athletes and 2,900 winter games athletes) I cover USA athletes and list medalists from the USA first over a international athlete who wins gold, in most cases if the USA doesn't medal I won't blog the results for the summer games except if the USA is having a slow day. I also will list USA medalists who were not expected to win a medal but does in blogging the results of the summer games. In the winter games, events and medals are far fewer than in the summer games so I do blog the results of USA athletes who do not medal. I blog the results of approximately 75% of the total USA medal count in the summer games and well over 95% of USA medal count in the winter games. I also love posting photos of the USA medalists as I only do this during the games themselves. Sometimes It takes a day to find the photos and I lag behind in posting them.
In 2012 I started making predictions of the medal standings for the summer games and USA athletes medal predictions and some international athletes as well for this blog. I have come the closest in predicting the 2012 summer games medals won by the USA, as I was only off by one total medal( 103 predicted vs. 104 actual). In the last three Olympic games(2014, 2016 and 2018) I've overestimated the USA winter games medal count and underestimated the USA summer games medal count. I also predict USA summer games medalists and in 2018 started making predictions for USA winter games individual athlete medalists. Unfortunately, I was wrong on most of them. Its better to stick to sports I'm more familiar with, Lol. Its very hard to make predictions and usually have to look at other predictions in order to make mine.
For the 2016 Rio games, I blogged about the numerous issues facing the games and it is the only time I've ever taken such an interest in pre games preparation because most host cities are well prepared to host a games, Rio was not prepared but pulled off a great games!
A great feature of this blog is the Olympic countdowns. Usually I post signaling one year from the games, six months from the games and 100 days from the games. For Rio 2016, I posted signaling 500 days from the games. I like to post on games anniversaries and games memories.
I have also expanded this blog to not only recap the opening and closing ceremonies but critique NBC's coverage of the ceremonies as well. I have provided results of the USA Olympic trials in swimming, track and field and diving since 2012 and since the beginning of this blog, recaps and reviews of the first 9/10 days of the games(mostly after the 2010 Vancouver games) and at the conclusion of every games. I enjoy critiquing NBC's coverage of the games as I've added that to my blog beginning with the 2012 London games.
I started out blogging the results without times and scores but gradually started blogging those too by 2012. The first two non Olympic years of my blog(2009, 2011) I only averaged a few posts per year. By 2012 I started posting more. The highest post year was in 2016 when I had 42 posts. The lowest was in 2009 with only two posts for the year. Then I started to blog the results(USA medalists)of the USA Track and Field Championships and Track and Field World Championships, USA National Swimming Championships and Swimming World Championships, USA Gymnastics Championships, Gymnastics World Championships and Indoor Volleyball Nations League/World League/Grand Prix play each summer. I've also blogged the World Beach Volleyball Championships. For the winter games, I would blog the USA Figure Skating Championships and the World Figure Skating Championships results. So there is plenty to blog when there are no Olympics, this keeps me busy blogging year round with a few months lapses here and there.
Since now the Olympics will be broadcast live across all time zones I will be blogging the Olympics live. This started with the 2016 Rio games. Watching the games and blogging the results live is quite difficult especially when there is a 13 hour time difference and when I have to go to bed as the Olympics are on live. At midnight eastern time, its 1 pm in Pyeongchang and I would stay up just to watch and blog the games until 2 am eastern time then have to go to work the next day. Normally at 11:45 pm eastern time I would wrap up the blogging for the day when there was taped coverage or in the case of the tape delayed London games, finish blogging for the day at 8 pm eastern time( 1 am London time) and then just watch the games without blogging them. Those days are history. From now on the games will be blogged live.
Finally, other projects like political campaigns may delay blog posts of some US/World championships(gymnastics) but I will post them at a later date. I've been doing this for 10 years now and enjoy blogging the Olympic games and sharing insights of the games as well!
Look forward to blogging Tokyo 2020 and beyond...
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