AND THE GOLD MEDAL IN WHINING GOES TO ...

One day before the Olympics start in B.C. But the games are already in full swing. The real games, the ones that actually mean something, those being The We're Only In It For the Money Games, and theWhining Games

Let's start with the Money Games. This basically breaks down into two divisions: Money made by athletes and how it affects these "amateur" games and the money generated by the Games themselves, so much money that we really can't pretend that these are truly "amateur" games

CTV is the Canadian network broadcasting the games. They own a local 24 hr news channel that I watch here, so I'm being inundated with their Olympic fervor. Today they were out in Vancouver asking people who they think it should be to light the Olympic flame. Mostly, people didn't care. That drove the reporters into a frenzy; of course you should care! It hasn't been decided yet! This could be controversial ... but it isn't. People really don't care. But CTV really really really wants then to, we all know controversy is good for TV. The same thing happened here as the Olympic torch came through Toronto. CTV treated it as if the torch contained the blood of martyrs or the world's first fat free hamburger, you know, something important.

The other part of the Money Games is the money that athletes make. When professional athletes were allowed into the Olympics, wasn't the facade shattered at that time? Well duh, I guess not, but people still seem to buy in to the Olympic myth ("buy" in, get it? um, nevermind)

Besides athletes who have high paying day jobs, we have the amateur athletes who benefit as well. The Olympics is all about money. In this day and age, it wouldn't exist if it was not.

Then we have the whining game. That is an athlete participation sport. You know, like someone refusing to mount the podium because she didn't win gold, someone accusing another athlete of using performance enhancing drugs .. and there's already been 30 athletes excluded from these games for this very reason

The whining game is off to a good start from the American men's skeleton team complaining that their Canadian counterparts have an unfair advantage due to the fact they had longer access to the facility .. well, duh, isn't that the home court advantage? And didn't the Americans have said advantage at any of the Games they've hosted

I understand why these amateur athletes, who compete just for the glory of competing against the best .. because a gold medal means gold in their pocket. A song from the 80's had this line "all that cash makes a succulent sound"

I think the sound is actually closer to a whine