I am a casual Olympic follower. When I was a little kid, I liked to pretend I would be an Olympic gymnast someday. I say “pretend” because I wasn’t allowed to do gymnastics after the age of about six. My parents were smart; with both standing at six feet tall I wasn’t likely to top out below five and a half feet. Still, gymnastics and figure skating have always been two of my favorite Olympic events to watch.

Last night, I had a realization while watching pairs figure skating. As I sat on my couch, folding laundry, I paid close attention to the U.S. pair of Amanda Evora and Mark Ladwig. They were charismatic and fun. They had stories. Mark was a volunteer at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and vowed he would eventually skate in an Olympic competition. Amanda Evora, daughter of immigrants from the Philippines, started ice skating because her Dad found her sister’s old ice skates and they just happened fit. The pair were the runners up in the U.S. nationals last year, and they set a team best score for themselves last night in the short competition. They are currently in 10th place. I realized, watching them skate, that I was literally watching two peoples’ dreams come true…

As corny as this sounds (seriously, I understand), I’d never thought of this before. I’m a very competitive person. But I don’t think I ever had a dream to compete in sports higher than at the high school level. As Evora and Ladwig’s performance continued, I found myself thinking about two little kids who didn’t just pretend to be Olympic figure skates- they worked to become Olympic figure skaters. Up until the exact point when their performance started, they had continued to work and as soon as they glided onto the ice for their performance, everything came to fruition. I was in awe for them. I don’t know what it is like to work for your entire life for something so intangible, and then finally have it, but they most definitely do now.

Maybe it’s because the Olympics only show up on our TVs every two years (alternating between summer and winter, of course). Maybe dreams seem bigger for our Olympians because out of the 3 million plus people in this country, we have around 200 Olympians competing this year in Vancouver. It’s not like professional baseball, where, during the season, there seems to be a game on every day and each team has a 40 man roster. We don’t see bobsledding every day during every winter. Or speed skating. Or a biathlon (what a strange, yet amazing, event). The Olympics are the World Series of the winter games, but that only happen every four years.

Last night Hannah Kearny won gold in ladies free style skiing. It was hyped as redemption from 2006 Torino’s event, where she was ranked number one and failed to make it past the trials for the event. She beat out the favorite, Canada’s Jennifer Heil, who took silver, and fellow U.S. teammate, Shannon Bahrke, who took bronze. She spent her life working for the 20 odd seconds it took her to finish in first place. Watching Kearny and Bahrke stand on the podium with the U.S. National Anthem playing was nothing short of amazing. Bahrke was animated, visibly singing along, while Kearny had tears in her eyes.

Friday, Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, died after crashing on his last trial run, hours before the opening ceremony for the games. His death has brought criticism and controversy to the games. The torch route had to be moved to avoid protesters. On such an epic international stage, there always seems to be some kind of controversy to discuss, along side of the dreams of the Olympians themselves.

On an unrelated note, pitchers and catchers report to spring training on Wednesday. While I’m still stuck in Olympic mode for a short while, I can’t say I’m not itching for baseball and the spring that will inevitably come with it!

Image Credit: sfoi.org

Annie is the Sports and Fitness Editor for Girls Guide. She writes about all kinds of sports related topics and then really goes out and plays sports almost every evening. You can contact Annie by emailing her at annie [at] girlsguidetothegalaxy [dot] com, and we are still trying to talk her into getting a Twitter account – no success yet.