My dad is Norwegian. He grew up in Salt Lake City, the son of Norwegian immigrants. I grew up saying Tak for Maten, “Thanks for the food,” after dinner and God Jul instead of Merry Christmas.
Winter sports were a part of our heritage, even if we couldn’t afford to go skiing often. After all, my grandma grew up in Telemark, Norway, the birthplace of skiing.
In elementary school, I was enthralled with the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. I remember sitting in front of the television with everyone in my house, cheering on the Norwegians as much as the Americans.
We cheered for Nancy Kerrigan and snickered when Tanya Harding fell. We hooted when my dad’s excited Norwegian filled the house as native son Johann Olav Koss set three world records in speed skating. And we all held our breath as Dan Jansen skated his final Olympic race to win his first Olympic gold medal.
It was invigorating; it was exciting; it was epic.
Where is that spirit now? What has happened to the passion? The Olympics used to signal the single greatest sporting event on the planet. Now it’s more like a vacation than a seminal event.
When asked how he felt about the upcoming Olympic Games in Torino, speed skater Apollo Anton Ohno crooned, “Oh, I can’t wait. It’s so beautiful, the people, the culture, and we all love the food. It’s going to be spectacular.”
American anti-hero Bode Miller was expected to bring home gold this year, but he has come up empty in four of his five races so far. Miller even went so far as to say an Olympic gold medal is not a big priority for him. “Not at all?I’d be happy if I could go to the Olympics and put down the right kind of performances, really great performances that I was proud of?”
The fact that our Olympic athletes are more concerned with “the people, the culture, and?the food” as opposed to the competition shouldn’t surprise us. This athletic apathy reflects something even more troubling in our American youth.
As a whole, we’d rather watch celebrities get fit on VH1 than watch our own waistlines-nearly 15 percent of teenagers in America are obese, compared with just 6 percent in the early ’70s.
We barely read anymore, preferring televisions and Playstations to newspapers and books. According to a study in U.S. News & World Report, more than half of all college students in America did not read a book last year.
And we’re ho-hum when it comes to politics-more young voters choose to stay home from the polls than any other demographic.
If we want to continue our excellence, not just in athletics but also in all regards, the change needs to come from us. It starts here: Eat more healthfully, read a good book, stay up to date with the goings-on in the world. Be passionate about something. Anything!
This passion can start incredibly small, just so long as it starts. Your first step can start right now.
Instead of pretending you don’t care, get up and vote next week in our own ASUU student elections. All you have to do is get educated about the candidates and then log on to your university account.
If we can’t even lift a finger for our university (and, incidentally, our hard-earned money), we don’t deserve the gold. We don’t even deserve to compete.