How to Pretend You Know What’s Going on at the Olympics
Did you know that the Summer Olympics include competitions in canoeing, BMX racing, handball, trampoline and judo? Maybe you didn’t, but fans of these sports definitely love it and you might run into these big brains and have to play along.
It’s hard to keep track of all the events and key players in a major event that happens every four years – or in this case, five years after the last – but it’s still a hot topic in the next few days, so you should at least try to fake it. … Here’s how to pretend you know what’s going on at the Olympics or any major sporting event that you haven’t followed.
Become a morning TV presenter
Millennials and Gen Zs are cable directors, as we already know, but there is an advantage to being the one watching morning television during the Olympics: NBC Today gets high coverage because NBC owns the American rights. …
Since the Olympic Games are held in Japan and there is a significant time difference, the morning show is required to reveal everything that happens during the night. Use this to your advantage. Morning TV is all about wellness content, so you will receive medal news and interviews with parents of American athletes, even if you devote only a few of your precious morning minutes to the mission. Parenting interviews are especially useful if you’re trying to gather a bunch of biographical facts about an athlete you’ve just heard of. By looking at just an excerpt from this report, you can understand where they came from, how they got into their sport and what they like to do, in addition to training and generally be an animal in the ring or on the court, or … whatever.
Use Twitter to your advantage
During any major event, keep an eye out for Twitter trends, including when the movie trailer comes out, when the Video Music Awards are being held and, yes, when the Olympics are taking place, where the trending list will tell you the basics of what you need to know. to keep up with the conversation.
When an American athlete is doing well or badly, he has a tendency. It’s really that simple. Most of the time, some kind soul on Twitter will write a little annotation about the trend, so you don’t even have to click on someone’s name to figure out what sport they are playing or why they are causing so much noise.
Sometimes athletes are inclined not only to their performances, but also for other reasons. Reduce these incidents – such as when Sha’Karrie Richardson was barred from competing this year due to a positive THC test, or when Simone Biles quit the game this week and cited mental health issues – because that you don’t need to know any important sports details. participate in cultural discourse. If you have an opinion about marijuana or mental health, you can easily talk about it, even if you don’t know how fast Richardson runs or what gymnastic maneuvers Biles is known for.
Learn more about the Olympic Games the old fashioned way.
If you’re on your way to a sports bar to cater to your Olympics-obsessed friends right now , and need immediate guidance, stick to Twitter trends. If you have time to inquire about the event … read it.
There’s a reason people go crazy about it every four years: The Olympics are fun and exciting. Athletes can be cute or intimidating, the statistics can overwhelm you, and it’s great to learn about the subjects you usually do for almost half a decade without thinking. All four years, when you were not thinking about some little-known sport, a handful of athletes thought about it non-stop . They have worked very hard for this, so you can learn a thing or two from all their efforts.
Because the Olympics are such a big deal, media prep coverage is months in advance and they call in their bright minds to do it. Go to the home page of any outlet you like and dig in.
“I would suggest reading tweets or the work of smart people,” said Dakota Schmidt, a basketball writer based in Wisconsin. Schmidt admits he doesn’t know much about the Olympics himself, “minus the situation with Simone Biles and the US men’s basketball and women’s soccer teams, who are struggling a bit.”
We’ll help you catch up with Schmidt and start your educational journey. Read the analysis of Biles’ solution here , the men’s basketball team here, and the women’s soccer team here .
Stick with what you know
“Follow the old-fashioned method of saying that a certain team or athlete is overrated or a GOAT,” Schmidt joked. “If you do that enough, you can be shown on television.”
He’s right, although you probably won’t make it to the small screen: while there are plenty of experts on television and in the media offering well thought out analysis, there are also quite a few people who have some pretty simple opinions. … Punditry, whether on the air or on the bar stool, is essentially a time filler between acts. You don’t need to know all the details of each sport to relax, watch how fast the balls are moving, and celebrate when your country will receive a new medal. You can just sit back and enjoy the show with standard criticisms and ideas like, “Wow, she’s fast.”