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The agony - The thrill - the $$
Snow Shoveling - A 2024 Winter Sport in Colorado
Winter is over, Spring has arrived, but one can still reflect on Winter and some of the Winter sporting activities and challenges that have embellished our lives, especially in Minnesota and Colorado. No, we are not talking big time sports like the NBA, or even the NHL with seasons that span half a year and a gazillon games. We are talking about snow and ice athletics like nordic and alpine skiing, ice skating, sliding, and even curling. In Colorado there was so much snow in March, that just trying to find a place to stack the white stuff became an athletic achievement with both muscle agony and the thrill of a cleared driveway.
An early March visit to Salt Lake City, site of the 2002 Winter Olympics, and perhaps the 2034 Games, helped set the stage for these reflections. The Utah Olympic Park ski jumping and sliding runs are still spectacular. However, it was obvious that many of these Winter sports consume an athlete’s life, and are financially restrictive to the primarily the wealthy. Winter activities use to be cherished as an experience of amateurish exhilaration. Now many of these competitions are excessively professional and too connected to money. You can even pay someone to clear your driveway and sidewalks of snow.
1924 - 2024
Paris
This summer, when all the snow is gone, Paris will once again host the Olympic Games. Paris has been the host city three times, with the last time one hundred years ago in 1924. In the acclaimed movie Chariots of Fire, one of the sub-topics was amateur vs professional athletes. The Games weren’t to be about money, they were about the competition between amateurs from around the world. If the amateur ideal was just eroding in 1924, it has been completely forsaken in 2024. Commercialism has even overshadowed politics in the NIL Games of this current century.
*NIL (name, image and likeness) $$
Never has NIL been so Large
Collegiate athletics in the US professes to be amateur, but in practice it has been professional for decades. The amateur charade was completely destroyed after a 2021 SCOTUS decision that determined the NCAA had violated antitrust laws. The ruling allowed student athletes to formally profit from their name, image or likeness. Although educational institutions are still prohibited from direct financial payment to student athletes beyond tuition, the workarounds (e.g., booster clubs, alumni organizations) are numerous and evermore competitive.
EASTER: THE AGONY OF VICTORY AND THE THRILL OF DEFEAT
Good Friday paradoxically commemorates the Agony of Victory in Christ’s death on the cross. Easter celebrates the Thrill of the Defeat of Sin’s power over all of us. Our Easter joy is not centered on the material, but on the NIL, and the very personhood, of The Christ who has restored our relationship with each other, and our Creator. He has done it.
The adjacent photo is a 1924 Easter Sunrise Service in the Garden of the Gods. Three crosses were located behind the 3 Graces formation and to the west of Cathedral Rock.
In 1924 Eric Henry Liddell refused to run in the Olympic 100 meter race, because it was on a Sunday. Later in the week, Liddell was Olympic champion in the 400 meter competition. Similar to Vinko, Eric’s post Olympic life as a missionary in Asia best define his relationship with others and his Creator.