| I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, but what really ruined the Olympics for me was the sudden realization of what they are. In essence, [modern] Olympics are a glorified parade of genetic freaks (ok, maybe not freaks, but outliers?). I don't mean this disrespectfully to the athletes, but at the same time, the reason they're able to break the top 10 in any particular sport is extreme form of selection bias. Their lungs are just a little bit bigger than everyone else's. Or their femur/thigh ratio or whatever. Or their fingers are extra flexible. So what we see is just a ruthless form of selecting the best people genetically, for that sport, since childhood. Yes, sure, they put in a lot of work, but so does every athlete who doesn't make it to the Olympics or WCs. And I'm sure 99+% don't make it. But you still can't overcome something like a height disadvantage in Basketball or Swimming with pure training. As someone who struggles with poor health genetics, watching Olympics for me is rubbing salt in the wound at best. And once you realize it's just genetic freaks performing "as expected", it's really all very boring. Also once you realize the performance records mostly stagnated after the 1980s, and most of the modern record improvements are due to hyper-optimized equipment. After all, would we be surprised that a dog is good at running or a fish is good at swimming? |