Olympic Flashback

Taking a night off from being glued to the Olympics, or at least long enough to post about them. (They're on in the other room and I can feel the pull of them. Help me!)

The problem has been that since they started, I tend to watch the events from end to end. One great showing leads into another. Add to that that DVR makes it possible to skip commercials, and I could cram 4 hours of programming into 3. Nice, but still a time suck.

Watching them has jogged my memory to some of the more memorable Summer Olympic moments. I actually prefer the Winter Olympics, but I do recall some very memorable summer athletes, events and milestones. These include:

1. The terrorist guerrillas in 1972 taking hostage and eventually killing 11 Israeli athletes in Munich. I remember watching some of the highlights when I was home during those long summer days. It was incredibly frightening, sad and difficult to understand at that age.

2. Frank Shorter's marathon performance in 1972. Not sure why I remember it, but it was probably because of his name.

3. Olga Korbut. She was the Russian who made us wonder why we hated the Russians.

4. Nadia Comenici, my first grade school crush. I wasn't keen about moving to Romania, but would have if I had gotten the call. I actually cut the articles out of the newspaper in the name of writing a report about her. I did the report, but kept the articles afterward. I still may have them somewhere.

5. Bruce Jenner's decathlon gold medal. To do one event good is one thing. To do 10 pretty good is amazing.

6. The Atlanta bomb. Great event, marred by violence.

7. Paul Hamm's Gold Medal comeback in 2008. AWaukesha native makes us proud after overcoming some serious mistakes.

Those are just some of the key events I remember. There are hundreds more somewhere in the banks of grey matter that are now devoted to remembering where I put my car keys and whether or not I fed the dog yet.

Blogging off...

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