Five Rings Of Boredom

So the Olympics is starting. Fucking wonderful - the giant international soap opera of sports is upon us, complete with hopelessly incongruous events such as basketball, and a guaranteed self-congratulatory excess of patriotic TV coverage. Normal service will be suspended while we are all deluged with unwanted and meaningless crap about all the athletes and their "personal struggles" and "path to victory".

I was a bit surprised that Paul Hamm, the gold medal winning US gymnast from the 2004 Olympics, had to pull out. Apparently he was unable to recover in time from a broken right hand. I did wonder whether losing the use of a hand was really a valid reason to withdraw though - couldn't he have just got a hand from the judges like last time?