I confess: I love the Olympics.

I don't love everything about the Olympics, but I love the Olympics in general. I like all that stuff about athletes joined in the spirit of competition and world harmony. I like the sports, especially skiing. I like feeling patriotic without feeling guilty. And, as with everything else, I like to make fun of the inevitable easy targets.

In that spirit, I present my 2002 Winter Olympics Arbitrary Achievement Awards.

Sports I'll Never Understand, Part I: Nordic Ski Racing, the Sport of Inconvenienced Men

Nordic skiing, AKA cross-country skiing, is a great workout. It's a quiet way to hike in the winter and commune with nature, if you're into that sort of thing, which I'm not. It's not a sport built for speed.

They take off at the beginning in a skating pattern familiar to skiers or skaters, but they've got no edges to grip the snow = no traction. When they finally get up some speed, they go through a phase of reaching with their poles and pushing themselves forward, which results in a field of skiers bobbing up and down like birds. I like to consider myself an adult, but this cracks me up every time.

They spend the rest of the course trying to go uphill on long slippery skis and looking miserable, and then they collapse.

I understand the allure of a lot of sports. Am I missing something here? Or are they?

Sports I'll Never Understand, Part II: Curling, the Sport of Ice Scrubbing

Since the Games began, my technical understanding of the sport has grown enormously. Growing in equal proportion is my bewilderment over curling as a chosen pastime. The ice scrubbing makes me think of Home Ec students on speed. Curling is just weird. Why is it called curling, anyway?

I looked that up. When the stone, which is the thing that looks like a teakettle, is released, it's spinning a bit, so it travels in a slight arc. Hence the name, or something like that. Apparently the person who does the throwing is called a curler. It still doesn't explain why anyone would want to do this.

Is curling a Canadian thing? That would explain a lot.

The Nancy Kerrigan Media Saturation Award: the figure skating pairs from Russia and Canada

Corruption among skating judges? Imagine that!

The medal ceremony was excruciating (yes, I watched it, I'm hopeless). Words fail me.

I thought the Russians looked beaten by the altitude and the Canadians looked beautiful. But unlike a lot of gymnastics fans, I'm not a crossover fan; I don't love skating. So who the hell knows who should have won, and, more importantly, who cares anymore? I just got sick of their faces.

The Jean Racine Karma Award: Jill Bakken and Vonetta Flowers, US Gold Medalists in Women's Bobsled

Jean Racine and her friend/bobsled partner Jen Davidson were everywhere before the Olympics. They starred in the Visa commercial with the rabbit on the bobsled track. They were celebrities, the toast of the international bobsled community (how esoteric is that?). Life was good.

Then Jean dumped Jen for a bigger brakeman. See, they have to get all their speed at the start, so the person in the back needs to be fast and strong. Jean thought she could do better than Jen and dumped her for Gea Johnson. She said something to the effect of: I could bring my best friend to the Games, or I could get a medal, and I want a medal. At least she's honest.

Racine came off as cold and callous. Her life is already a mess, so far be it from me to wish her ill, but apparently fate spoke for me.

The United States had sent another team as well, Jill Bakken and Vonetta Flowers, and they won the gold. No one had really noticed them until then, because Racine caught the brunt of the media. Now Racine has no best friend and no medal. It just smells like karma.

The Lucky Bastard Award, female athlete: Sylviane Berthod

Alpine ski racer Sylviane Berthod of Switzerland took a scary fall during the women's super G race and practically cartwheeled into the three fences of netting lining the course.

I watched her knees the whole time she tumbled. She had three or four good chances of wrecking a knee or snapping a leg, but she kept pulling her legs around straight somehow and landed back-first into the netting. She got up afterward and seemed to be fine.

I'm sure she'd rather have won the race, but survey says she's lucky to be walking.

Those are some cool skier-catching snow fences.

The Lucky Bastard Award, male athlete: Steven Bradbury

Not expected to medal, Australian speed skater Steven Bradbury lucked into a gold in the 1000 meter race when the skaters at the front of the pack fell in a pile of steel and spandex. Bradbury had been at the back of the pack, so he steered around the pileup and right over the finish line.

"I saw them all on the ice and I was like, `Hang on. This can't be right. I think I won.'" (source)

Thank you, Steven, for providing one of the most surreal moments of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Interestingly, Bradbury runs a small business in his parents' garage, making speedskating boots. Guess who's among his clients? See below.

New Athlete Hero, male: Apolo Anton Ohno

I am not a speed skating fan. I don't know anyone who speed skates. I can't imagine how my back would feel after a few rounds bent over like that. And I don't understand why Apolo Anton Ohno's first name is misspelled. But he's an amazing athlete.

I found myself most interested in watching his eyes. Even when he's passing, his eyes are quiet and calm, almost serene. His game face is a poker face. I don't know where he gets his will to win. He's a very cool-headed athlete.

I caught a short interview with Ohno and Bob Costas, and he came across as polite and relaxed. I just wish he'd shave.

New Athlete Hero, female: Janica Kostelic

Janica Kostelic, a one-woman team from Croatia, won almost every women's alpine skiing event and caught a silver in the super G. How does a woman from a war-torn, economically screwed country (which most of us didn't know was, in fact, a country) get the tools and the training to emerge as the hottest skier since Picabo Street?

Street is a former athlete hero, by the way. If you diss her name, she'll kick your ass, and then I'll make fun of you. I love me some Picabo.

As the Games have progressed, the announcers have started to figure out how to pronounce her name, which I see as progress (they had to do it with Picabo, too). It seems to be Yanitsa Kohstelich, "Ko" rhyming with "low."

However her name is pronounced, I pronounce her an athlete hero and hope her country of many consonants gets its shit together.

The Two Words Award: ladies' figure skating

It's over.

The Golden Groan Award for Worst Commercial: Ralph Lauren's polo.com

The World of Ralph Lauren is made up almost exclusively of beautiful, rich white people who spend an inordinate amount of time in formal wear. It's phony and it's grating. And for some reason, it's especially annoying coming from a social climber like Lauren, who was originally Ralph Lifshitz from the Bronx (source).

The Public Relations Crisis Management Award for Best Commercial: American Airlines

No voiceover. No defensiveness. Just a reminder that the people at the airlines were hit just as hard as everyone else on September 11, and that they're Moving On. Nicely done.

The Games are over on Sunday, finally, and I'm grateful. I'm getting sucked into the television eyes-first. Now I can go back to working out in the evenings, and my television can go back in the closet where it belongs.

Until the next gymnastics meet.