What Your Favourite Olympic Event Says About You
We all know people who are convinced that you can practically read someone’s entire personality based off of their star sign. I’m not going to tell those people they’re wrong, but I find you can tell a lot more by their tastes; food, movies, partners and sports. With the Olympic Games at our doorstep, we thought it would be a good time to play armchair psychologist and break down exactly what your favourite Olympic event tells us about you. Here’s our expert analysis.
100 Metre Sprint
You’re a typical millennial, totally conforming to mainstream tastes. You also have the classic youth attention span; you probably think The Godfather should be split into three parts because it’s “too long” and “gets boring halfway through”, so the perfect event for you is one that could fit entirely into a TikTok. You like things simple, none of these unnecessarily complicated weight classes, disciplines and scoring systems. That guy runs the fastest? Awesome, let’s not muck around, fire up that national anthem, chuck a medal around his neck, let me get back to looking at houses I can’t afford.
Modern Pentathlon/Wrestling/Fencing
You’re an old-fashioned traditionalist who wishes we could get back to the good ol’ days of violent coliseum crowds and butt-naked athletes. Your favourite event was chariot racing before that got unjustly outlawed in 67 BC after too many mangled participants. You’re constantly bemoaning the ‘commercialisation’ of the Games and think the inclusion of too many ‘urban’ sports has ruined the spirit that Olympics were founded on. You possibly watch the Games on your leather couch at a country club in your polo gear with your ma-MAH and pa-PAH.
Beach Volleyball
You’re either yourself a volleyball player or you read Playboy magazines ‘for the articles‘. Come on buddy, you’re not fooling anyone.
Weightlifting
You’re a real grinder, you know that nothing comes easy in life and you’ve got to suffer to succeed. You’re an optimist and see the weight–lifting as the ultimate triumph of human will and determination. Either that or you’re a sadist and you’re watching in the hope someone hurts themselves so you can forward the link to all your friends and brag that you “saw it live”, as if that’s some kind of achievement. You definitely finish watching and get all fired up about how you’re going to ‘give it a go’ yourself, but you either ‘never get around to it’ or you nearly tear your rotator cuff in the first training session and decide it’s best left to the big beefy guys and gals in the singlets. You are not scared of a little body hair.
Football/Golf/Tennis/Rugby Sevens
You’re a shameless casual who really couldn’t give a damn about any of this Olympic spirit and tradition bollocks, you just want to see your favourite athlete dominate another competition and win a gold medal that likely will end up shoved to the back of their trophy cabinet because, well, who really cares who the Olympic champion is in professional sports? You’re at war with the modern pentathlon ‘traditionalist’ type, but you likely have far less skin in the game and actually think it’s ‘cute’ that they let the ‘weird’ sports get some shine. You will undoubtedly ask multiple times “what time is Phelps/Bolt on”, despite being told repeatedly that they’re both in their mid 30’s and not competing, to which you reply, “that sucks, I’m not watching without them”. I’m sure they’ll be just fine without your viewership.
Top image by Ilgar Jafarov