For about a week now we have been watching the Winter Olympics from Korea.  The Games started with the same formulaic and boring Opening Ceremonies.  I’m sorry, and I confess to watching some of it, but unless they tell you which Olympic parade of nations you’re watching, it’s hard to tell one from another.  This year’s ceremonies were a bit different though.  The International Olympic Committee banned a Russian team from competing in these Olympics.  It seems that, 4 years ago in Sochi, the Russians built a building directly next door to the building to be used as the Lab that would test the athletes’ urine samples to ensure that they were not cheating.  In the spirit of international sportsmanship, the Russians cut a hole into the Lab and used it to replace “dirty” Russian urine samples with “clean” samples.  They got caught, and the Russian Team was banned from these Olympics.  That means no Russians will be at these Games, right?  Wrong!  Athletes who pass a real test can still compete as Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR).  Just no Russian flag or anthem.  Big deal.  The decision of Kim Jong Un to permit North Koreans to march in with South Koreans as one team got a lot of attention.  I guess if a South Korean wins a medal, Kim can take credit for it.  It’s just for 2 weeks, though, when the Games end, they’ll be at each others throats again.  I was really hoping they would use one of Rocket Man’s missiles to light the Olympic flame.  Too bad.  Anyhow, the Games grind on.  There are hours of TV coverage every day, and I continue to be drawn to it, but the real question is “Why?”  These Winter Olympics sports all tend to blend together, and frankly, some of them are strange.  The ancient Olympics in Greece had nothing to do with snow and ice.  There were a small number of events:  boxing, equestrian events, chariot racing, riding, pankration, pentathlon, discus, javelin, jumping, running, and wrestling.  What in the world is pankration, you may ask?  It was sort of like ancient Ultimate Fighting.  Biting and eye gouging were not permitted, but belly kicking was O.K.  The most popular sport for television is figure skating, because every female in America wants to spin around fast and then get jewelry.  I can’t take it anymore.  In the old days the only times we saw these winter sports was about once a year on Saturday afternoon on Wide World of Sports, or every 4 years in the Olympics.  Today, there’s a televised figure skating competition almost every week.  Enough already.  Every one of these skaters is a tightly wound head case, and I simply don’t care if they get marked down for landing their triple Lindy on the wrong side of the skate blade. It’s tedious.  I’d rather watch the Sumo wrestler figure skater from the Geico commercial, or have a pairs competition where they have to lift fat women over their heads.  Then we have skiing, of all descriptions.  It doesn’t matter, we’ll watch just about anything.  Skiing straight down the hill, skiing side to side through poles, skiing over bumps and doing flips.  Then there’s cross-country skiing.  We sit for hours watching people ski in circles, uphill, and every few minutes they whip out a rifle and shoot stuff, which is really the best part.  (If the figure skaters had to dodge gunfire, that would be a sport).  Another popular TV sport is snowboarding. It is fun to watch, but basically, they are handing out medals to teenagers for doing tricks which, if done on a skateboard in your driveway, would cause you to yell, “Get off my property!”  Sledding is big too.  Every man would love to drive a bobsled (push it and jump in the back, not so much).  At least the bobsled gives you some protection.  To ride a luge down the track, however, is something else again.  I’ve been to Lake Placid and seen the luge track.  The walls on the turns are straight up and down.  These people hurtle down the track at over 80 MPH, through 180 degree turns, and can’t see where they are going.  I take nothing away from these fearless athletes, but the difference between 1st and 15th place is less than a second.  I think you could send a 150 pound sandbag down the track on a luge and still get honorable mention.  Moving from the fearless to the absolutely nuts, another popular sport is ski jumping.  In Lake Placid, I took the chair lift up to the top of the 120 meter jumping tower.  Whew!  Anybody who skis off that thing into the air, flies hundreds of feet and survives the fall, deserves a medal.  For comic relief, we have curling.  I don’t know who came up with this one, but it’s sort of a combination of shuffleboard, bocci ball, beer pong, and Spring cleaning.  One player slides a polished rock with a handle down the ice, while the others use brooms to sweep in front of it, coaxing the rock into scoring position.  It looks easy.  It’s not.  A number of years ago, my daughter and I attended an open house event at the Plainfield Curling Club here in New Jersey.  These are serious competitors.  We got to try it, and it’s not as easy as it looks.  Think sliding the rock is the easy part.  Think again.  I tried to do it.  Just put one knee down and slide it … crash, I keeled over onto the ice.  My daughter was much better at it.  You have to admire the dedication of these athletes, and we’ll keep watching whatever comes on next, despite the predictable NBC coverage.  If they broadcast only the competitions, and left out coverage of personal tragedy – “He (she or it) is skating (skiing, sliding, curling) with a heavy heart,” they could cut out about an hour a night.  Bottom line, I’m tired of it already, but what’s coming up tonight?