Thrust your Hips and Squeeze your Knees Together

I love the Olympics.  Summer and Winter.  Every 2 years, I watch hours and hours of sports during a two week period.  Sports that on a regular basis I don’t have a lot of interest in, but cannot get enough of when they are all crammed together and feature multinational competitors.  There are exceptions, obviously.  I will never have any interest in hockey or long distance running/skiing/skating.  But other things that I would never think to watch at any other time; ice skating, ski jumping, swimming, gymnastics . . . I am zealously invested in during Olympic season.

The interesting thing about watching sports that I do not usually follow is listening to the “expert” commentators.  Each sport seems to have its own language and/or terminology, that most people would not be familiar with if they were not fans or participants of that specific sport.  And sometimes, listening to the commentators talk about specific sports is like listening to a foreign language, even though they are technically speaking English.

Take mogul skiing for example.  I was watching this Olympic event the other night, rooting on the favorite and prior gold medal winner, American Anna Kearney, during her final run.  Sadly, she didn’t accomplish a repeat gold medal win, and had to settle for bronze when she made one little mistake.  That’s really all it takes in these types of highly skilled competitions.

Yet, however disappointing it was to see her heartbroken at coming in third, and her failure to grab another gold medal, there was a silver lining.  Two, actually.  For her, it was the fact that she still gets to bring home an Olympic medal for her country, obviously.  But for me, it was hearing the commentators talk about her run.  Because immediately after her bronze medal run, the commentators went through it again in slow motion and gave a full description of her different moves . . . with the most delightful, unintentionally sexual descriptions of any Olympic event that I think I’ve ever heard.

Here are some of the things that they actually said while describing her run over the mogul hills:

She gets bucked around a little bit but squeezes it back together.

There’s that action, getting her tips on the ground.

Nice tight knees together.

Then thrusting her hips forward . . . pulling her heels back underneath her.  And the effect is a nice steady upper body, quiet head, quiet hands, as she swings her pole tips out.

Is that not the most wonderful description of a sporting event that you’ve ever heard?  I know it was good for me.  In fact, I’m not sure if I should be yelling “U.S.A!  U.S.A!  U.S.A!” or if I should go smoke a cigarette.  I guess I can do both.  I just love sports.

What is your favorite saucy sports terminology?