The Olympics Is Here Again

Been enjoying the 2012 Olympics for the past 1½ weeks. I remember watching my first Olympics on TV way back in 1976 when I was a little girl and  how I especially loved the women's gymnastics events. That was the year Nadia Comaneci won perfect 10 scores in gymnastics and became such an inspiration to little girls all over the world that I had even dreamed of becoming a gymnast myself. Of course that never happened, so just as there are armchair travellers I became an armchair gymnast and cheered for the gymnasts competing at every single Olympics since then.



My older brother taught me to play badminton when I was 6, probably because he was bored and had no one to play with. I remember using the front gate of our house as a net, and how I soon mastered the game and we had many hours of fun competing against each other. I found that I was good with the racquet and took part in inter-school badminton tournaments in primary and secondary school. In college I even took up squash and won 2nd place in a college squash tournament. I could play table tennis too, but strangely enough, could never master tennis itself. I lost so many balls over the fence that I eventually gave up.

Some of the sports trophies from my primary school days

Sports became an outlet for the very shy young girl that I was, and I loved swimming and basketball, but was deathly scared of getting hit by a volleyball. Growing up with 2 brothers, I could even play football and knew all the teams in the English football league. The teenagers in our church youth group would have outdoor sports activities every Sunday afternoon and I sported a tan that most Caucasians would envy (back in those days we didn't know very much about the dangers of UV rays from the sun), although now in my forties I have to pay the price with freckles that refuse to fade no matter what beauty cream I use.

Sadly, a recurrent knee problem has put a halt to many of my sports activities. So every four years I stay glued to the TV during the Olympics and now with YouTube there's even more to watch. Oh, and I absolutely LOVE the daily Google Olympic doodles, especially the interactive ones.

To play, click the link: http://www.google.com/doodles/hurdles-2012
(Use the left and right arrows to make him run, and the space bar to jump over the hurdles).