Final Thoughts on Olympics

I liked Stephen Colbert's observation about curling. "It looks like housekeeping," he said.

The 108 continuous hours of curling coverage on MSNBC got me so fired up, I went around the house dusting everything.

Do you think that if any country swept through the curling competition unbeaten, it's anthem would have been, "Get out the brooms?"

Seriously, I'm going to start training for the 2014 Winter Games. I'll be in the prime of my curling career. I'll be 75.

Curling is a dangerous game, I must say. A well-conditioned curler is liable to die of old age at any time.

It reminds me of the game we played in bars 50 years ago, sliding silver discs a mite smaller than hockey pucks down a polished wood board. The object was to get them as close to the end as possible without falling over. That game could be resurrected for the Summer Games, something to keep curlers in shape during their off-years.

The hockey gold medal game between the USA and Canada was a thrill a minute, but I couldn't shake the thought that it was essentially the NHL all-star game, except with something at stake. All the players on both sides were NHL stars. Nobody watches the NHL all-star game any other year, but the Olympics made this one important.

Since pros became eligible for the Olympics several years ago, hockey has lost its luster for me. Canada should win the gold medal every year, since most pro hockey players come from Canada, just as the U. S. should win basketball.

I'm jaded because I covered the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid when a bunch of American college kids and semi-pros upset the heavily-favored Soviet pros and went on to win the hockey gold medal. Oh, yes, I was right there in the rink. It was the height of the cold-war and the Olympics were squarely in the middle of political gamesmanship. It was during those Winter Games that President Jimmy Carter announced that the U.S. would boycott the Summer Games in Moscow later that year to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. New York Times columnist Red Smith supported the President. I was adamantly opposed.

I was outraged that Carter would use the Olympics as a political tool in this way. The Soviets retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Both sides were stupid.

Anyway, 1980 was dramatic on so any levels.

Sunday's Canada-USA gold medal game was fun. So is an international walleye fishing tournament.

This article reprinted from CoughlinUnplugged.com, through a partnership between Dan Coughlin and The Cleveland Leader. To read more of his writing, visit his website.