I’m still very into watching the Olympics, as I am every four - er, two years. Watching the Olympics makes me want to trade in my couch potato existence for the life of a ultra-fit athlete. I imagine myself gliding through the water in the 200 meter breaststroke finale. I visualize myself spiking volleyballs over nets with terrifying speed and power. I dream of hearing the Star Spangled Banner play as I stand on the pedestal with a gold medal around my neck after having conquered my rivals in fencing, or field hockey, or even table tennis.

And then I get tired just thinking about it all, and I settle down on the couch with some cheese and crackers and continue to watch TV. And after having watched the Olympics on TV for the past week, I have a few Olympic hypes - and one Olympic gripe.

Hype: Gymnastics. For me, gymnastics is to the summer Olympics what figure skating is to the winter Olympics: it’s the one thing I absolutely don’t want to miss seeing. I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason I love gymnastics and figure skating so much is because they are the most “artistic" of the athletic events in the Olympics. Some people might argue with that proposition, and that’s fine. It just seems to me that gymnastics, and especially figure skating, are very much like dancing in regards to rhythm, precision, and creativity. I love watching figure skaters and gymnasts for the same reason that I love watching ballerinas and ballroom dancers: I am entranced by the grace and precision of their movements and the absolute control that they have over their bodies. It never ceases to amaze me, especially since I often feel so awkward and clumsy myself.

Hype: Swimming. Basically, I like the swimming because swimming is the one Olympic sport that I could somewhat “realistically" imagine myself participating in. I mean, really realistically I could never participate in any Olympic sport - not in this lifetime anyway. But I’m a good swimmer, and I love to swim, and in a parallel universe I could maybe have been an Olympic swimmer. But in this universe, when I was about 9 years old, I made it onto a swim team and then decided to take piano lessons instead - and that pretty much says it all about my relationship to athletics in comparison to my relationship to the arts. But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying watching the Olympic swimmers. The divers are good too. And I really dig these new full-body swimsuits. Very cool.

New hype: Fencing. I’m glad that German television shows the stuff like fencing. I don’t remember getting to see that kind of stuff in the States. Someday I will learn how to fence. Until then, I will watch people who already know how to fence. I would say that fencing seems very civilized, but I guess there’s nothing really very civilized about someone trying to stab someone else with a rapier, even if there’s no real stabbing and no real rapier involved. Nonetheless, fencing is so graceful and elegant that it’s simply a delight to watch. And I like the archaic-ness of it.

Big gripe: The way the German media deals with German athletes. Apparently for the German press, “just being there” at the Olympics is not enough. The German athletes are expected to win a gold medal in every event in which they participate, and if they don’t manage to do this, then they are losers. When a German athlete wins a bronze medal, the journalists don’t ask, “Are you happy to have won the bronze medal?” Instead they ask, “How does it feel to not have won the gold medal?” Or even worse, “So how does it feel to have lost?”

Athletes such as the swimmer Franziska van Almsick are built up to superhuman proportions in the press, and then when they can’t live up to the unrealistic expectations, they are ripped to shreds. I’m not a huge fan of Franziska van Almsick, but I am starting to feel sorry for her in the same way that I felt sorry for the admittedly rather pathetic German national soccer team this past year. You are a media darling here until you make one wrong move, at which point you become nothing more than an object of endless criticism and derision. Woe betide the athletes in Germany who “fail to deliver”.

I’m sure this problem is not particular to Germany. I honestly don’t remember ever hearing an American journalist at the Olympics asking an American bronze medal winner what it feels like to have lost, but maybe I’m mis-remembering past Olympic games. Of course athletes are hyped in America (and elsewhere), and of course what the media builds up, the media can knock down.

It just seems that when, say, American athletes don’t do so well, the American press and public may express a feeling of disappointment, but not of shame - and that’s really the deciding factor here. When the German soccer team did so badly this past year, everyone talked about “the shame of the nation.” The same thing now seems to be going on with the Olympics, particularly with the German women swimmers. I personally think that most nations have more globally relevant things to be ashamed of than how well or badly their sports teams are doing, and I also think that any athlete who has even made it to the Olympics - much less won a medal of any sort - deserves a whole lot of credit.

But that’s just me. Maybe I’m just too in awe of any and all Olympic athletes to even consider criticizing the performance of those athletes. Sure, it’s a shame when your favorite athlete doesn’t win. But it’s not shameful.

Anyway, my one gripe doesn’t have anything to do with the Olympics in and of themselves. The Olympics are, as always, fun and exciting to watch. The real letdown will come when they’re all over and I have to go back to my regular programming - at least for another 2 years.