Let the Games begin!

There was a time when I loved watching the Olympics, but not so much anymore. I realized this last night when just 28 minutes into the opening coverage of the Winter Games in Vancouver, I found myself thoroughly bored. Granted, I was perhaps rushing to judgment, since last night's broadcast had very little to do with sport and much to do with pomp and circumstance, which I've never been terribly fond of.

Less than an hour into the broadcast, there had already enough faux intrigue and drama to make me turn my attention to other matters. Whatever happened to just covering sport for sport's sake?

Instead, the network parcels out its coverage in small doses of feel-good narratives, interspersed between monstrously expensive commercials.

It was hard last night to watch athletes from country after country come parading into BC Place stadium, all smiles and waving flags and bright colors, just hours after luger Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia had lost his life in an Olympic training accident that was sickening in its suddenness and violence.

Life does not always lend itself to tidy narratives.