Every two years, I am jumping-out-of-my-seat excited when the Olympic season starts. From keeping track of qualifying athletes, checking out medal designs to impatiently awaiting the opening ceremony, I start talking about the Olympics months in advance. So after talking about the 2022 Winter Olympics I was surprised to find out many of my peers weren’t planning on watching the Olympics at all.
In fact, only 150 million people watched the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, compared to the 198 million viewers of the 2016 Rio Games. This was interesting for me to learn as someone who loves to watch the Games, and I think we need to start watching the Olympics more.
Something I love about the Olympics is the wide variety of sports played. At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics there are 109 events across 15 disciplines being contested and the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics hosted 339 events in 33 different sports — the most in Olympic history. This kind of variety ensures that everyone can find something they enjoy watching. Personally, I love watching figure skating and snowboarding, but I’ve also gotten into watching skeleton, a new sport I discovered recently where the athlete slides down an icy track on a sled going head-first.
The Olympics can be a great excuse to socialize and have fun with your friends. You can have an Olympics watch party, whether it’s for one sport or multiple, or for the opening or closing ceremonies. You can go all out — make lots of party food, do themed decorations and even use a whiteboard to keep track of each attendee’s favorite athlete/team.
You can also use the Olympics as a way to make new friends. My friends and I have developed a pattern of putting the Games on the television in our lounge and asking random people who walk by if they want to watch with us. To our joyful surprise, some of the people have actually taken us up on our invitation and we had a great time watching and getting to know each other better.
There are also a lot of Olympians who are part of Generation Z. Winter Olympic medalists Nathan Chen, Chloe Kim, Ayumu Hirano, Karen Chen, Yuma Kagiyama, Eileen Gu, Shoma Uno and Su Yiming are just some of the 2022 Olympians born in or after 1997, making them part of Generation Z, the same generation as many of us at NC State. In my experience, it’s a really fun experience to watch people my age go out and do amazing things on an international stage like the Olympics.
One of my biggest reasons for watching the Olympics is how they function as a beacon of unity and peacemaking. The mental refresher and all of the good news that can come with the Olympics is really important for our mental health, as it can help balance out all of the negative news we consume.
A great example of unity shown at the Olympics is the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. In 2018, the winter Olympics were hosted by South Korea during a time when relations with North Korea were tense. However, the two countries decided to put their tensions aside for the Games and marched into the opening ceremony under a unified flag and name, being announced simply as Korea. The two nations also came together to form a unified women’s hockey team. The team didn’t win any medals, but it certainly won the hearts of the world as a beacon of peace and togetherness.
One may find it hypocritical to applaud shows of unity and peace when the governments of the very countries that are making these shows don’t reflect those values. It’s a fair criticism and one that I find myself making at times as well. However, it’s important to remember that the Olympics aren’t managed by national governments.
The Olympics themselves are managed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), an apolitical global organization and within the countries themselves, Olympic participation is managed by the national Olympic committees. The organization of the Games is in the hands of the IOC and the host country’s national Olympic committee, forming an Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games to handle the managing of the Games. While the organizing committee may have involvement from public officials, it ultimately answers to the IOC, meaning the Games really have little to do with the governments that are involved.
So why not watch the Olympics? You get to experience one of Olympic Games every two years, and you get to watch some pretty amazing athletic feats. Not everyone will be an Olympics mega-fan — even I can’t keep up with all of the Olympic sports. But it can’t hurt to turn on primetime a few times throughout the Games and cheer for your favorite athletes, whether you already have one in mind or just choose one at random while you watch.
If you want to watch the 2022 Winter Olympics before they close, you can catch coverage on live TV through NBC and USA or on NBC’s streaming service, Peacock.
