Olympics Wrap-Up

August 24, 2008 - So after 2 weeks of watching more sports than I have in the past 2 years, my Olympics watching officially came to an end with the Closing Ceremony (which I had to watch on youtube!). Surprisingly, I watched way more of the Beijing Olympics than I thought I would, thanks to the CBC online streaming site that allowed me to watch pretty much every sport and almost every race or competition that I want. With the end of what may be the most spectacular Olympics ever, I thought I would share three of my most memorable moments of these games (at least the moments that I managed to watch):

- Matthew Mitcham of Australia wins gold in 10m diving and kisses his boyfriend in front of tv cameras

This kid (only 20 years old!) managed to beat the heavily favourite Chinese divers with an amazing final dive and won the only gold medal in diving that did not go to China. How did he celebrate his win? by running to the stands and kisseing his mom and his boyfriend! Aww. He is also the only openly gay male athlete out of the 11,000 at the Olympics. Kudos to him for 1) winning the gold medal; 2) being openly gay in a field that's still homophobic and 3) for making his sponsors fly his boyfriend over from Sydney so he could watch him compete. It doesn't hurt that he's super cute as well.

- Matthias Steiner of Germany cries on the podium holding a picture of his late wife after winning gold

No one really thought he would win gold in weightlifting after he failed to lift the two lighter weights. In his final shot, he decided to go for it and raised his weights by 10 kg - to 258 kg. He groaned, yelled and lifted it over his head. The announcers were clearly shocked - no one thought he could do it. On the podium, as the German national anthem played, and with tears flowing down his face - he took out a picture and smiled at it: it was a picture of his late wife, who died a year ago in a car accident. On her death bed, he had promised he would make their joint Olympic dreams come true. And that he did.

- Natalie du Toit of South Africa swims in the open water race with one leg

For many, it's hard enough to swim with two legs, but this girl from South Africa became probably the first one-legged swimmer to swim in an Olympic competition. Her determination and grits are hard to match. She finished 16th in the race, but she is definitely inspirational. Anyone who came back from the shock of losing their leg to training for the Olympics deserves our applause.

The excitement of winning medals at the Olympics are truly memorable, but what I think makes the Olympics special are these truly inspirational stories. I'm sure I missed a whole bunch too, like that story of the US swimmer who has testicular cancer at 24 and still swam in the Olympics, or the story of the Somalian girl who came in last in the 200m race but still got a standing ovation. It's great that for 2 weeks every 4 years, the world focuses not on multi-millionaire baseball players or hockey players, but on real athletes that show what true sportsmanship is all about.