What you're not seeing on the Olympics

I've seen many people online saying that they've have had avoid being online the past week so as to not hear who won certain Olympic events before they had a chance to watch them. The first day or so, I too was annoyed about this.

Then, I just took to listening/watching the live stream in the background while doing other things on the computer. (I have to have noise to concentrate.) Other than the fact that my internet connection has been somewhat off kilter (the broadband light has been flashing red instead of green) and what probably has to do with the main feed to NBC, this is THE way to watch it.

Why?

1. You can live stream just the events you want to watch. If you want to watch women's gymnastics, you don't have to watch beach volleyball. 
2. It doesn't take 4 hours of prime time to watch all of what happened. So help me, I think the women's gymnastics all around took maybe an hour and a half from start to finish with warm-up.
3. There's no Bob Costas whatsoever.
4. There's no John McEnroe or Ryan Seacrest either.
5. The announcers are mostly British, and it's kind of fun to hear for a change.
6. The announcers don't talk as much or get nearly as excited as Rowdy Gaines. No wonder his names Rowdy. Can he speak normally?
7. You see parts you wouldn't see otherwise. I'll explain more later.
8. You don't have to avoid all the spoilers floating around.
9. You can catch the Ranger game at night if you so prefer, or do other things like get out of the house. Or, you can just go to bed at a decent time.

But, I can't do this from work or have time during the day? NBC also has full replay, but it usually isn't the same day.

Earlier in the week, I watch the previously recorded swimming heats from that day. All of the heats. The heats 1-5 that they don't show on TV because they are the slower swimmers. These are the athletes from the countries you've never heard of--the athletes from the countries that only had 5 athletes walk in during the opening ceremonies. 

These swimmers made the cut off on the qualification time to be at the Olympics, but in no way have the training (because there may be one pool in the entire country) or abilities of the medal winners. Yet, this is still there chance to be an Olympic athlete. The heats are divided by qualifying time, and they don't swim with the "big dogs" because the "big dogs" wouldn't know how fast they needed to go to win. And they would literally leave these guys from Burundi and the Congo in the dust.

These swimmers have the Olympic spirit that you once heard about. They are the best of their country. They are proud to represent.

They are not wearing red, white and blue grills on their teeth that they have to put in their pocket during medal ceremonies like the giant ego that is Ryan Lockte. I'm so over him. And the article that his mom or someone did in ESPN talking about his one night stands because he didn't have time for a relationship and proud of it. I'm over all the harrahs over Michael Phelps too. At least he admits, "I'm not winning because I didn't train these past four years like I did in the past." I give him credit for saying he's doing this Olympics for the fun of it and that he's not surprised when he gets beat.

Onto another Olympics subject...

When I took a break at lunch today, I turned on the TV to water polo. Is it just me, or do we need to re-examine some of our sports? Do that many more countries play competitive water polo than say baseball which is no longer an Olympic sport? 

I knew there were rifle events, but I never realized it was skeet shooting that was done in the Olympics. 

How has ping pong, oh, I'm sorry, table tennis, worthy of Olympic competition? And how about the various Asian countries throwing badminton matches to get better pairings?

To me, even white water rafting in giant man made hot tub with jets seems a bit ridiculous.

What's your take on the Olympic games?