10 Needed Changes to Save the Olympics

The Olympics have sucked for a decade now. It’s not all COVID’s fault.

Since the tremendously entertaining 2012 London Olympics, the Olympic movement has ground to a halt. The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were hard to stomach because of their location in Putin’s Russia. The 2018 Winter Olympics suffered from a lack of household names, no NHL players, and being played in Asia due to the time difference. The 2022 Winter Olympics had all of that, while also being played in communist China during COVID.

The two Summer Olympics haven’t fared much better. The 2016 Rio games were — tell me if this is a theme? — marred by a corrupt government and the painful sight of so many empty seats during so many big events. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were completely destroyed by COVID-19, but also marred by NBC’s insistence on using the Games to push its awful, failing Peacock streaming service on an unsuspecting public.

It’s now been a full decade since the Olympics have felt like the Olympics of my youth when the Games transcended sport and politics to become the defining global gathering every two years. The 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s were defined by their Olympic moments. You just have to say names and the images appear. Carl Lewis. Michael Johnson. Kerri Strug. Michael Phelps. Sidney Crosby. Nancy Kerrigan.