a note about the Olympics

My roommate has inspired this post since she likes to watch curling when the winter Olympics are on TV:

As we all know, the Olympics originated in Ancient Greece as an athletic contest. Only free, Greek-speaking men were allowed to participate in the events, which were originally only just foot races. Boxing, chariot racing, and discus throwing were added later. So basically the modern Olympics are not very much like the ancient predecessor since we neither speak Greek, all live in Greece, or just run in footraces (there are currently 26 summer Olympic sports). Hopefully we can all read and are freemen, but that doesn't have to be the case.
But here's a fun fact about the origin of the ancient Olympics: it was founded by King Pelops. Now that might not seem very interesting, except mythologically he is the son of Tantalus. Tantalus actually killed his son Pelops and served him to the gods as a meal. The gods punished Tantalus with eternal hunger and thirst and then restored Pelops. Pelops wasn't a nice guy. After literally being mincemeat he cheated during a chariot race to win Hippodameia as his wife. Basically his whole family is cursed since his sons (Atreus and Thyetes) are totally d-bags who also like to make people into pies. And we wonder where Shakespeare thought up some scenes from Titus Andronicus.

But this rant was really supposed to be about curling. Let's see: ice, brooms, rocks? Sounds like communism if it were a sport.

Curling is actually Scottish and has been an Olympic sport since 1998. But they take curling pretty seriously; ice professionals monitor the ice to make sure it stays at the right temperature. That's crazy! There is also handicapped curling, so the Special Olympics can have curling as well.