A few more random thoughts:
I may have, in the course of flipping through events, composed an original song titled Eileen Gu, Where Are You? set to the music of Scooby Doo, Where Are You?. I’m not saying I necessarily DID, mind you, but….. I’m not saying I DIDN’T, either.
*Ahem*.
There has been some hullaballoo on the internet, and, presumably, in other places, about stuff like certain people not performing up to expectations, etc. There’s been a lot of talk. Personally, I monitor sites like Reddit for stuff like this. There, analyses abound. Pressures of this, circumstances of that. Honestly- speaking as someone that has played a lot of sports in my day- sometimes you just lose. That’s the nature of athletics. Nobody wins 100% of their matches. Nobody. EVER. No matter how great, no matter how dominant, wins 100% of the time. That’s reality.
TBH- consistently winning over 50% of your matches / games in a professional setting must put you somewhere near superhuman territory. I mean even that is virtually impossible.
I think that a lot of the internet chatter is coming from people that don’t have much personal experience playing sports or competing themselves. I could be wrong, but that is what I would bet.
In my own life, I’ve played quite a few sports. Obviously, none were professional level, but I’ve played on organized baseball, basketball, soccer, football, TaeKwonDo, Karate, wrestling and other teams. Mostly high school-ish level but a couple above that.
Sometimes you can come in the favorite, prepare perfectly and do everything to the best of your ability and still lose. It happens. It happens a lot in sports, all the way from kids playing T-Ball to the Olympics. It’s life.
So I choose not to involve myself in Reddit discussions and the like.
Other stuff- there’s a lot I’ve missed, obvii. Will need to watch, and will do so, in the coming weeks and such. And I believe I will catch the Paralympics as well. So there will be more of these coming.
One more random thought- Huh, wow. Been watching Snowboard Parallel Slalom- Woah, a handful of athletes there in their mid 40’s, and at least one in her 50’s! Wow! Hmmn, interesting.
Been watching YT videos about certain people not aging as fast as they should, or at least as they used to (mostly celebrities, natch). Not going to cue up the lecture here about myself and my creepily youthful appearance, but… hmmn.
Food for thought.
Back in the 80’s, an Olympian in her 50’s in any capacity would have been an impossibility. I mean I’m saying this without googling, but… wow. And, really, snowboarding isn’t curling! I know there are curlers that are older, but snowboarders? Wow.
And she made the finals! I mean she qualified, knocking off a bunch of twenty five year olds! I haven’t seen it all the way through yet, I just started but man, that is… kind of unreal.
The number one qualifier in the finals was a 45 year old on the Men’s side. Hmmn.
Weird stuff, but very very cool and so interesting.