Dalia Does…The Olympics

I’ve never really been into sports. In fact, the last sporting event I followed closely was when the Kardashians got beat up in a boxing ring for charity. Now, don’t get me wrong – I appreciate the merits of both playing and watching sports, and whenever there’s a big match (be it football, tennis or even UFC), I’m usually entertained enough to watch it in its entirety, but I don’t usually care who wins and my interest disappears as soon as the final whistle is blown. But for the last couple of weeks I’ve been all but addicted to the Olympics. Ever since a couple of Olympics channels popped up on my OSN box, I’ve been glued to my TV for hours at a time watching documentaries about the games. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it’s because the documentaries are completely nonsensical – they flip between sports and eras about 25 times in a one hour show, so at one point I could be enthralled by just how high the high jumpers jumped in 1988 before quickly being taken back to the origins of rugby as an Olympic sport in 1900.Then they’d throw in an interview with Usain Bolt, talk about the Winter Olympics for a few minutes then show this heart-breaking clip of Derek Redmond who is suddenly injured on the track and is helped over the finish line by his dad. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions, but then again so is watching the Kardashians being beaten up in a boxing ring for charity.

There had to be something else that had me so fascinated, especially since the Olympics hadn’t even started yet. Maybe it’s because winning feels good, even when you watch someone else do it. There’s something awe-inspiring when you know that the people smiling cheesily on the podiums are the fastest, strongest and most disciplined people in the world. Being the best in the world at anything, even if it seems like a pointless sport (ping-pong, anyone?) is pretty damn impressive, but it couldn’t completely explain my obsession. I was endlessly entertained by the footage from the 40s and 50s, when people wore suits and top hats and even monocles (seriously) to watch the games, but that couldn’t have been it either. I’m pretty sure the men in skimpy outfits could only account for around 30% of my fixation.

Then the opening ceremony came along and it turned to full-blown hysteria. It was ridiculous. I cried when I saw just how big the Olympic Park was and how it had been transformed with colours and lights and thousands of happy faces. I cried when they brought a clip of Amy Winehouse. I cried when the Egypt team came out. I cried when I found out that one of the Independent Olympians was from the newly-formed South Sudan. I cried even harder when the Palestinian team came out, especially when the commentator mention that the UN won’t recognise Palestine as an entity but the Olympic Committee do. For some reason I cried when I caught a glimpse of Prince William and Kate Middleton. I cried when I saw Ban Ki-moon helping carry the Olympic flag (though I’m mad at him for not recognising Palestine) and I cried when I saw Muhammed Ali. I cried when I heard the British crowds sing along to the Arctic Monkeys and I cried when the band covered the Beatles (but for very different reasons). I cried when I thought about the startlingly-recent independence of the Eastern European countries that, until the 1992 games, had competed as the Soviet Union. I cried when the weird cyclists with angel wings on their backs swept across the stadium and I cried between the ‘nanananaaaaas’ during Paul McCartney’s performance of Hey Jude. I swooned when David Beckham arrived down the Thames but I was right back to crying when I saw that London even honoured the thousands of people who helped build the massive Olympic Park by including them in the ceremony. I cried when the torch was lit in the centre of the playing field and the fireworks danced and dazzled in the London sky.

With the Olympics officially inaugurated, it hit me. It wasn’t just about the entertainment and the excitement. It wasn’t the achievements and the accolades, the sports and the spectacle. It wasn’t even David Beckham. My new found obsession with Olympics, both past and present, surfaced because each event, every four years since 18-fucking-96, acts as a bookmark in the history of world. You know at the end of every decade when magazines and TV shows has a run-down of all the biggest moments? The Olympic Games is just like that, except more frequent and whole lot more important. You can tell a lot about the state of the world, from society and politics to culture and communities, and even celebrities and style, just by taking a look at one of the 30 Olympiads we’ve had to date. In the space of just 16 days, the entire globe is brought together and forced to communicate and commemorate, and that outweighs all the gold medals in the world.