6 Days

 I have not been as good about blogging my way to the Olympics as I hoped. I blame the amounts of weddings and bridal showers I have had to attend.   That said, I have never had so much fun at bridal showers as this year. Yesterday I got to beat a pinata to bits while wearing a toilet paper wedding dress. What could be more fun than that? honestly?  

     When I set out with this goal, I had a few things in mind I definitely wanted to cover, memories of all the prior Summer Olympics, memories of opening ceremonies, my time as a volunteer with the 2002 games in Salt Lake, and some of the tragedies of the Olympics.  

  Due to recent events I am not ready to talk about the tragedies of the Games yet, so I will pick up with what I remember of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. 

This will be a short posting. I don't remember much of the Sydney games. I don't know why, they just didn't make a mark in my mind. I remember the Sydney Opera house being shown a lot, I remember Rulon Gardner beating the Russian guy at wrestling and it being compared to Rocky,  I remember Eric "the Eel" Moussambani, from Equatorial Guinea  making me cry. He set the record for the slowest time in his swimming event, but why I remember that is,  that though he was over a minute behind the rest of the field, it was a really great feat. He set a personal and national best time in that moment, and he had never seen an Olympic sized swimming pool. 

   He got into the Olympics on a wild card invite designed to help developing nations raise their level of athletic ability. It was a first for his country, and honestly, its what the Olympics are all about. I cried a lot in that moment.  There were a lot of great Olympians in the 2000 games, from Australia, and the Netherlands.  For me the 2000 games were the opposite of the 1996 games. Amazingly awesome host, mostly forgettable athletics. 

  I believe Marion Jones lost medals from this Olympics. Not really sure. See ,I know I watched every second of this that I could, and I know I missed very few moments, but I honestly have no personal memory or attachment without extensive research, and even then, what I remember is minimal. 
   If I were Australian or Dutch that would probably not be the case.  I know those athletes all worked very hard, and did accomplish great things, I just don't remember much of it. That is a very sad thing for me to admit, but there it is. I am usually very good at getting excited about the Olympics even if its not the USA that is being amazing. Somehow, I failed to do that in 2000.  I hope that the London Olympics are memorable and in a good way, because I don't want to remember any more tragedies and I don't want to have another forgettable Olympics.