Turin – Let’s be honest, guys. If there’s anything a cheeseburger-fed, American-bred male hates more than stopping the car to ask for directions, it’s being stuck in front of the television, forced to watch a sport he doesn’t understand.
Maybe that’s why the Winter Olympics leaves so many beer-drinking, belly-scratching guys feeling cold.
Skaters in sequins and snowboard dudes with attitude scare the slush out of middle-aged men who cannot get enough football.
“I’m very princessy,” U.S. skater Johnny Weir said Tuesday, offering a quote I’d be willing to bet has never been uttered in any major-league locker room.
There must be a genetic flaw in the Y chromosome. How else to explain the strange occurrence certain to be witnessed often in households across the USA during the coming days? The brassy notes of the Olympic theme song will cause men to surrender control of the beloved remote control and voluntarily go clean the garage.
I have a theory. Jacques Rogge is president of the IOC. But the Games are programmed by Oprah.
The opening ceremony is full of pageantry that makes the Tournament of Roses Parade look like a third-grade play. Do they allow a kiss-and-cry zone at the World Series? Of course not. There’s no crying in baseball. And judges have the power to turn many Olympic events into popularity contests. The Games are touchy-feely.
There are otherwise strong, salt-of-the-earth guys who simply cannot handle it.
As sure as Pavlov’s dog drooled, the eyes of a chauvinist roll at the mention of two words: Winter Olympics.
“If I tell somebody I’m a figure skater, they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s sweet.’ They’re not overly excited,” Weir said. “Generally, people find out I’m a figure skater, they’re like, ‘Oh, how’s that working out for you? How are the rhinestones?’
“I think oftentimes figure skating isn’t taken seriously because there are judging scandals, there are all these little girls in rhinestones, there are all these little boys in rhinestones, and people are not that supportive of figure skating because it’s not something they understand.”
The sports of the Olympics are treated like a freak show staged every four years, only to be forgotten as soon as the flame goes out and the winter carnival takes down the tent. This mystifies ski champion Bode Miller.
“It would be like people watching basketball in the Olympics and being totally nuts about it … then straight up never turning on the TV and not being intrigued at all about the NBA for another four years,” said Miller, now identified across the country as that crazy dude who skied wasted.
The Olympics are a rare time Americans allow sports nobody considers mainstream in the family room. Speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno puts his feet up on the furniture. Dads shudder to think that one day a daughter will be dating a guy who looks like him.
Personally, I dig the Winter Games, hooked on the vicarious adrenaline rush from watching daredevils ski 70 mph at the jagged edge of a mountain.
But I know guys who can bench-press 250 pounds who get squeamish at the sight of two Olympic athletes being stacked like a spandex sandwich on a luge hurtling down the ice.
Weir, standing 5-feet-9 on his tippy-toes and a box of jelly doughnuts shy of 150 pounds, does not fit anybody’s stereotype of the American sports hunk. And that’s the way he likes it.
“I think if figure skating was any more mainstream it would be whole lot more boring,” said Weir, who professed he would rather be on the cover of a tell-all book than see his picture on a Wheaties box.
Let the Games begin. Don’t worry, guys.
Your wife will give back control of the TV when the Olympics are over. If you’re lucky.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
