OLYMPIC YEAR TRAINING FOR ELECTION YEAR

Rested and tan and training the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. President Nixon a Top 10 sports President. via usatoday.com

Why sports and elections both need Olympic Year Training.

Every four years the Olympic Games roll around.

With the Winter Games and Summer Games broken up, we get the Olympics every two years, but for now let’s use the four year schedule.

Besides, it matches better with the American Presidential Election cycle.

We’re not talking about mid-term elections any more than NBA Hall of Fame player Allen Iverson was talking about practice.

“Practice? We’re talking practice?”

No we’re not, and we’re not talking about mid-term elections either. We’re talking about the Olympian effort needed to run for President, and trying to match that with voter effort.

We’re talking about education, but with a twist.

Baby boomers aren’t getting ready to compete in the 2016 Rio Games.

They won’t run the short races, the long races, broad jump, high jump, or triple jump.

They won’t throw the metal stick, ball, or plate.

No diving, swimming, or synchronized swimming for them. But they’ll learn from others.

What they can’t do has never stopped the Boomer Generation and it won’t stop them now.

Like the rest of the aging world boomers look to sports for inspiration, to inform them on human progress.

Also like the rest of the aging world, boomers think Olympians show up every four years. For most of the athletes it’s part of their season. They show up ready to go.

‘Ready to go’ is something all should aspire to. That’s the next stage after ‘getting ready to go.’

An Olympic year is huge. An election year is huge.

Why not use the experience of one to inform the other.

The Olympic year training for election year so far.

The Brazilian water venue for the sailing competition is an open sewer.

From oregonlive.com:

A new round of testing by The Associated Press shows the city’s Olympic waterways are as rife with pathogens far offshore as they are nearer land, where raw sewage flows into them from fetid rivers and storm drains. That means there is no dilution factor in the bay or lagoon where events will take place and no less risk to the health of athletes like sailors competing farther from the shore.

Crap in an Olympic year, mud slinging in an election year. You don’t want the splatter from either. You know it’s coming so be ready.

This Olympic year fears the Zika virus. The election year fears Trump and Clinton. One will shrink heads, the other makes you feel like you’re head shrunk.

One tests for performance enhancing drugs, the other tests for dark money. Both Olympics and elections want you to believe it’s all part of the broken system. In Russia, it is.

One is run by a shady empire of sports companies, meet directors, and national team officials. The other is run by lobbyists, donors, and party officials.

Athletes rarely catch a lucky break and win gold. Eddie The Eagle, the English ski jumper from 1988 is a soaring example.

From smithsonianmag.com: