The obsession continues

I know who Duff Gibson is (and that he grew up in Scarborough), what the "team pursuit" is and why the Canadian women's hockey team is going to win the gold. That's because it's been all Olympics, all the time this week (well, as much as it can be when you have a full time job). I've been switching the station to CBC at the gym, going to www.cbc.ca/olympics at least four times a day, and when Erin and I were deciding to go for dinner on Friday I insisted the pub/bar/restaurant have a TV.

Like I said: I am obsessed!

But I am also curious about how some of these sports even get thought up or how one figures out that he is good at them. A prime example: skeleton (which we are good at having won three of six medals between the men and women's competitions). Are the elite athletes in this field the kids who had the cheap parents who wouldn't buy them a real sled, but rather they got stuck with the $3 sheet of plastic that is the "crazy carpet"? Are these the kids who got so good at sliding down the hill on that accident waiting to happen that they decided to do it head first and seeing as how they lived to tell about it they now find themselves on the medal podium at the olympics? Because really, I can find no other scenario that would tell you that this is the sport for you - go on, try it, you might just excel.

I also find the biathlon weird, but it's more so about the strangeness of having someone cross country ski for a kilometre or so and then deciding it might be fun to have them take a short rest and fire off a few rounds. Who comes up with these things?

I think it might be kinda fun to try and come up with a new winter sport - but, of course, only if it is something Canada would excel at...Maybe we could have athletes drink a few beer and then do something. Or snowmobile racing? Ice fishing? Winter diving?