A week ago the Olympic Winter Games began. A big ‘yes!’ for sports freaks since all their favorite disciplines will come by within the coming weeks. To me though the Olympics are about more than ‘just sports’ because whenever I read the paper or watch the evening news I hear about China not liking Obama anymore because he receives the Dalai Lama, I hear about an ever growing mess in the middle east and recently I even heard about a priest who refused to give a homosexual Christian the Holy Communion. But whenever one of our beloved Dutch ice skaters enters the Olympic Oval the entire country seems one, gays seem accepted. And even better; when Mark Tuitert won the 1500 meters there wasn’t a sign of war on the front page of the newspaper.
The Olympics do more than confiscate the front page though. Every time I tune in to watch – I don’t really care what’s on, whether it is speed skating, figure skating, biathlon, alpine skiing or freestyle snowboard – I find it extremely beautiful in a way that’s pretty hard to describe; I’m gonna try to do though.
Probably the best example of extrinsic beauty at the Olympics is figure skating. At the time of writing two Americans are giving me the goose bumps with their dancing on ice. They’re performing the craziest stunts I wouldn’t even dare to dream about while wearing beautiful clothes covered with small shiny stones; it’s ballet on ice.
So far for the obvious beauty, there’s much more aesthetics to figure skating. Look close and you’ll see the clothes waving in the wind generated by the momentum, you’ll see the guy lifting the woman before his head and – without sight – carry her from the one side of the arena to the other. If you’ll look beyond the outer appearances there’s even more. You’ll see a beautiful ‘dance’ between man (two ice skaters) and nature (frozen water leading to almost no friction, making such artistic expressions possible). And if you look close enough you’ll see all these aspects in a certain variety in all sports.
Another good example is freestyle snowboarding, with the U.S. hero Shaun White. I hadn’t heard of him until I read about his new trick at The New Yorker. It appears that he can manage to do the Double McTwist 12 – this is a crazy trick can hardly be described with words, it would be two screws around his vertical and three around his horizontal axis. I think you can better have a look for yourself; the fun starts at 0:28.
So this is what the Olympics are for me, a perfect ballet between people, countries and nature. And if you look close enough you’ll see all.
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