Not All Gold Medals Are Created Equally

The Olympic's 20K race-walk event was on the USA Network tonight. I felt compelled to watch a little because, well, I have no social life.

After watching for a few minutes, I started to believe that I may be perfectly suited for this event.

As I just mentioned, I have no life, which is required to begin training.

There are strict rules prohibiting a competitor from going too quickly. Perfect.

Only one knee can be bent at a time and one foot must be constantly in contact with the ground, or the judges will give you a yellow card. Three yellow cards in one race and you are disqualified. So that eliminates all competitors with an ounce of actual athletic ability. This suits my weak cankles.

The course is lined with mist machines and periodic shade, much like a shopping mall.

The competitors wear tiny silk shorts and tank tops, as if they are real athletes. I'll use any excuse to be partially nude in public.

So, in the great debate of who is the finest Olympic athlete ever, can we really say that all gold medals are created equally? The gold medal for race-walking looks exactly the same as the one for boxing.

The poor announcers must have gotten a little too drunk at last year's company Christmas party and hit on the boss' wife. Why else would a sports journalist be assigned this one?

They were actually trying to fill the monotonous repetition of this (what's a word that means the opposite of sport?) by speculating about possible trash talking in Spanish from one of the not-really-racing racers. Apparently he's known for his gamesmanship.

One of them must have still been drunk in the booth, because I swear I heard him say that so-and-so was the Michael Jordan of race-walking in Brazil. Will somebody please cut his mic? Better yet, cut the entire video and audio feed. Dead air is not any less interesting.

I am fascinated with the complete boringness of this event.

The IOC should expand it.

What if they had, say, four different techniques of walking? Forward, backward, crawling, and scissorsteps.

Of course, you would need at least three different distances for the competition.

Now, what if one person (like me) really practiced hard his whole childhood, with a rigorous workout routine that included follow the leader, red light, green light, freeze tag etc..., and won all 12 of these events in his (my) first Olympics at age 17.

He or she (now I'm apparently gender confused) then returned for two more Olympic Games to win eight to 10 more gold medals each year.

If I could win 30 or so lifetime gold medals in race-walking, would I be the greatest athlete in the world?