I’m ready to give the Olympics another chance

I have a theory that most Olympic fans don’t watch sports year-round and that many sports fanatics don’t care about the Olympics at all.

My good friend Kara, a huge 49ers and UH fan, takes offense to this theory because she loves the Olympics.

My evidence is, admittedly, mostly anecdotal. Most of the friends I see on my social media feeds get excited about the Olympics, but otherwise never talk about sports.

For example, Jamie, a friend since college, recently posted that she’s subscribing to Peacock (NBC’s streaming service) for the month so she can watch more Olympics. I’m also planning on adding Peacock for a month, but so my daughter and I can stream seasons 5 through 8 of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” before she goes back to college.

That’s right, I fall into the latter group from my first sentence. I’m a huge football, basketball, and baseball fan who doesn’t care about the Olympics. Most of my friends who post about professional sports don’t give a hoot about the Summer and Winter Olympics.

Well, this year I want to put an end to that—or at least try to. As long as I get Peacock, I figure, why not give the Olympics another shot, see what I missed. After all, I wasn’t always this into the Olympics.

Some of my strongest sports memories as a kid come from the Olympics. I remember seeing:—Mary Lou Retton make history in 1984 (back in the good old days when all Americans agreed that Russia/the USSR was the enemy);—Katarina Witt and Brian Boitano win gold in figure skating;—Greg Louganis hit his head on the diving platform;—Carl Lewis became famous enough on the track (and in field jumping?) to earn the right to rape the national anthem.

Even as a young adult, I watched nearly every minute of The Dream Team’s groundbreaking (and world-famous) race at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. And I can still remember watching Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul beat Nancy Kerrigan in the figure skating event in 1994.

Somewhere in the last 30 years, however, I stopped caring about the Olympics, except to create a sports section that gives our readers what they need. I admired the achievements of GOATs like Simone Biles and Michael Phelps, but I rarely watched a second of the actual competition.

So where do I start when I dive back in this year? Men’s basketball seems like a good place to start, with three of my world champion Boston Celtics on the team (though Jaylen Brown is somehow not one of them). Oops, I already missed Game 1—a win over three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic and Serbia—because it was airing at 5 a.m. here, as was Saturday’s game against Puerto Rico. But maybe I can still catch Wednesday’s rematch with a feisty South Sudan.

I’ll probably also watch the women’s basketball team once they reach the medal rounds.

Any sport with athletes from Hawaii is worth trying, so men’s volleyball is also worth a try, as is surfing. The fun part is that I might spot my high school classmate Johann Bouit, who lives in Tahiti and is involved in organizing the competition.

That’s not much, so let’s take a look at what’s on TV today and try to figure out what Brian Boitano would watch.

I like tennis in general, but it just doesn’t feel special when these players play against each other all year long. My son played water polo in high school, so that might bring back some fond memories. We both did judo, so that might be cool. I grew up playing table tennis and even had a biology teacher at Pearl City High who had a table in the open space where other science labs might have lab tables (since our lab tables were our everyday tables). At the Olympic level, the sport is a far cry from what most of us play recreationally, which makes it relatable but all the more impressive.

Looking further ahead, greats like Biles and swimmer Katie Ledecky are high on my list, but potential breakthroughs like gymnast Frederick Richard (of Bah-ston) and swimmer Katie Douglass are probably worth watching. The U.S. has some great runners in Noah Lyles, Sha’Carri Richardson, and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone who can pull off performances that bring back memories of childhood stars like Lewis, Florence Griffith-Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Edwin Moses.

Maybe I should just turn on the TV and click around to see what catches my attention. Part of the challenge in Hawaii, of course, is that there’s virtually nothing to watch between noon and 8 p.m. every day. But hey, I can always put on a baseball game during those hours if I can find one that isn’t blacked out.