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Betty Werth

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August 17, 2008

Betty Werth: Admiring Olympics from my sofa

By BETTY WERTH

I've never been an athlete, but I watch them on TV.

I don't know about you, but for me sports are like spandex shorts. They look better on other people.

I don't know whether it's my attitude, lack of coordination (I can fall lying down) or luck that hampered my development, but my athletic growth never got any bigger than a wart.

So when the Olympics are on, I am a junkie. I watch the competitors with a mix of awe and disbelief. How do they DO those things? How do several dozen women jump on bikes and ride 126 kilometers in the rain up the mountains? When I rode my bike as a kid, when it rained I always went home! Crying!

I never wanted to pedal until I was exhausted or hot or even damp, but then I never had any dreams of Olympic glory. I dreamed of being a princess, and princesses don't do sports. They wrinkle the dress.

I never really wanted to be athletic because I suspect it hurts. I watch these Olympians and wonder where they get the motivation to push their bodies so far in the face of pain. I guess it springs from the competitor's fierce will to win, which in me never developed beyond a preference to more or less do OK or, failing that, to have a good time or, if that doesn't work, to duck out early.

Besides, from the start I lacked aptitude for physical achievement. Some of us are given exceptional balance, coordination, spatial awareness, grace, strength, or speed. I got an overbite. I couldn't catch a ball, throw it, bounce it more than once, or kick it with my foot. When we played those endless games of dodgeball in the backyard I couldn't even dodge. I was "it" until I quit.

I did manage to play tag and hide-and-seek and after considerable high-pitched screaming learned to swim and ride a bike. I could go down the slide, ride the merry-go-round, and jump rope, but for actual sports it was clear from the start that only with personal coaching and daily practice, begun early in life and spread over more than a decade, would I get to the level of "beginner."

And even had I possessed the right attitude and a measure of aptitude, I had enough unlucky experiences to convince me that sports weren't for me. I tried tennis and on the first ball I managed to return, hit the instructor in such a way that he went down on all fours and crawled off howling into the woods. I tried lawn darts and sent my partner to the emergency room when I buried one in his thigh. I tried golf and swung so many times in four holes that the game was called on account of wind.

So for me, the Olympics are a place I like to visit every four years but wouldn't want to live. I admire the athletes for their strength, resilience and determination and love to watch them compete. From home. On the sofa. With a snack and lap robe and a fierce desire to stay up until I'm kind of tired.

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