The Olympics Have Arrived

It has been only three years since the last summer Olympics: the 2020 Tokyo Games, you’ll recall, were held in the summer of 2021. Time has been slippery since the pandemic began, anyway, even without reliable milestones moving around. Three years feels simultaneously like an eternity (think of how much has happened in the last three weeks) and a heartbeat (I’ve been just about to check out this playlist of “frat rock” recommended by Bruce Springsteen … for the past three Julys).

Now the Olympics return with untold opportunities to geek out on sports you haven’t thought about for several years, or ever. This is my favorite promise of the Games: You can pick an event — Canoe slalom? Surfing? Breaking? — and get up to speed in short order on the rules, the athletes, the gossip, the stakes. You can become a superfan instantly.

Broadcast coverage of the Olympics makes this transformation easy. I’m a total sucker for a hyperemotional documentary featurette on that gymnast whose family sacrificed everything for her Olympic dreams. Take my attention and my heart, give me the thrill of sticking the landing and the agony of one tiny wobble on the beam. I’ll admit I haven’t been following the American swimmers that closely since Tokyo, but I’ve spent the past week reading up on Katie Ledecky’s preparation for Paris — she’s “trying to improve her kick” — so I can cheer her on with a fan’s zeal.

I never thought I could get excited about dressage, but after hearing the awe with which my colleague Alex Marshall talked about watching a gelding named Jagerbomb perform a move called a flying change, wherein the horse switches its lead leg in midair, I went straight to YouTube to see it for myself. “One of the strangest things I’ve ever seen an animal do,” Alex had told me, and I concurred. I’ll add that it is also strange and wonderful to see a horse perform such moves to a medley of songs by Tom Jones that includes “Sex Bomb.” Alex wasn’t a fan of dressage before he started reporting on it, but his enthusiasm was enough for me to add it to my roster of Olympic sports I’ll follow with interest.

I’ve tried to become a football fan for the Super Bowl, a basketball fan for March Madness, but there’s always so much lore to catch up on, so much multiseason intrigue I’ve missed that true instant fandom seems out of reach. The Olympics make it easy to get on board. There are so many events and so many teams competing that it would be impossible to be a completist; this density rewards the passionate dilettante and the aficionado alike.

The easiest way to become a fan fast? Ask a die-hard. My colleague Elisabeth Vincentelli played team handball as a child in France, and her knowledge of the sport is a little intimidating. But she gave me some rookie tips for how to get into it: As far as the mechanics of the game, think of it like dry water polo; keep an eye out for powerhouse teams from France and Denmark; watch the ball — players shoot it at the goal at an average of 80 miles per hour; and go to the bathroom before the match begins because the game moves so fast you won’t want to look away for a second.