Watching The Summer Olympics for the First Time

Last Friday August 8th, was the start of the Olympic games in Beijing. My family and I were not planning on watching any of it, because most years we hardly pay attention to any of the Olympics. But this year was different; after hearing about how great the opening ceremony was my family and I decided to watch it. It turned out that the opening ceremony was fantastic. All of the special effects were just amazing, and I couldn't believe some of the things that were going on. Because the opening ceremony was so great, my family and I decided to watch more of the Olympics, and we were not disappointed.

My family isn't big on watching a lot of sports, so it is surprising that we actually enjoy watching the Olympics. It is so interesting to see sports that we are not used to seeing on T.V. There are even some sports on the Olympics that I have never heard of before! It's also great to see all of the sports we were already familiar with, and seeing how great all of the Olympic athletes are.

Over the past six days I have seen tons of sports that I wouldn't even think of watching otherwise. On T.V. they have been showing a lot of water polo and handball. I have heard of both of these sports, but have never really bothered to watch them. I found both of them to be surprisingly interesting, and I have so much respect for all of those athletes. Both sports look incredibly hard, and I just couldn't believe how good the people were at playing them. One sport that I have never heard of that I watched was synchronized diving. This is exactly like synchronized swimming except much harder, and you dive instead of swim. This event looks virtually impossible to do, and I just could not believe how well the divers were. When the Chinese woman's team dived, they did it to perfection. If you looked at their dives from the side, you couldn't even tell that two people were diving, it looked like one person. What made it even more interesting to me was the fact that most of the woman divers were only 15 and 16 years old, which is my age. It is just so strange to think people as young as me are in the Olympics already, and actually winning medals. This made me very impressed.

My favorite sport to watch so far is also a favorite among many other Americans; Swimming. Even people who don't pay any attention to the Olympics know all about Michael Phelps and how great of a swimmer he is. He already beat the record of having the most Olympic gold medals, now he’s working on winning the most medals in just one Olympic year. So far I have watched basically all of Phelps races, and of course he won all of them. Every time I see him it still amazes me how fast he is. It is just so hard to believe that anyone can be that good, and win every single race. It just goes to show if you put your mind to something, you can achieve anything.

Even though there are a ton of Olympic sports I enjoy watching, there are some that I just can't stand. For example Olympic boxing is probably the worst boxing matches I have ever seen on T.V. Boxing is one of the few sports my dad actually watches, so I have seen it tons of times before. The Olympic version is completely different, and it kind of seems like a joke. Another sport I didn't particularly like to watch was fencing. Since I haven't played or really watched the sport that much, it was very hard for me to keep up with what was going on in the fencing matches. Fencing was just too confusing to watch, and not something that was very fun to see either.

So, for the most part, the Olympics have turned out to be very exciting and interesting to watch. In just six days I watched everything from volleyball and gymnastics, to rowing and water polo. It's great to see how well we can do something if we just practice long and hard enough. The Olympics are a perfect example of that. There are still a ton of days left in the Olympic Games, and I can't wait to see what other sports and events I will be able to watch.