Five rings all adjoining, commemorating competition and brotherhood around the globe. The pageantry known as the Olympics comes around every two years, but the attractiveness only occurs every four.

The ESPN poll of who’s watched the Winter Olympics comes back thumbs down. Fifty percent of the voters said they haven’t watched any of it, not even the opening ceremonies. I can’t go so far as to completely casting off the Winter games, but I’ve watched very little, and what I have watched has not been impressive.

The site is impressive. Torino, Italy is a beautiful place and I would imagine the spectators are really enjoying the history and culture. The Olympics are impressive: being one of the best in the world at what you do and actually crowning a champion is one of the best ideas since the dawning of time. Athletic competition comes way before the wheel or fire. But I think what turns people off to the Winter Olympics is that the American competitors, for the most part, are not the country’s greatest athletes.

In the Summer Olympics you get to see the strongest people, the fastest people, the best fighters and – flat out – top-of-the-line athletic machines. Barring a few of the Winter competitors like Shaun White and Jeremy Bloom, for the most part, the competitors from around the world aren’t spectacular athletes. If I wanted to watch pretty good athletes in their craft, I would go and watch pick-up games at IMPE.

The Winter events favor the non-athlete. I watched the skiing long jump and came away with the feeling that “he who points his toes best wins.” The male competitors were 5’5”-5’10” and weighed in around 120. This description doesn’t strike me as athletic, and, unless you are trained in the event, every single jump looks about the same. This is why 50% of the population was watching The Animal Planet.

Another fact of society that plays into the Winter Olympics is that the events are those only practiced by the affluent class. Skiing, skating and snowboarding are expensive sports to play, so unless you are of a certain economic grouping you don’t start off on the slopes. It’s much easier and less expensive to give a kid a basketball or, heck, tell him to run somewhere and play tag. I don’t want to point the finger at our winter competitors and point out the rich kids, but I doubt many of them had to scrape it together in between riding the gondolsa. You have a hard time telling me that if Lebron James grew up rich and in Colorado that he wouldn’t give you the sickest show on the slopes since “Cool Runnings.”

I’ll go back to Jeremy Bloom. He is the exception to the Winter Olympics – a great athlete. He not only is the best mogul skier in the world, but in between his Olympic career and modeling he had time to start on the Colorado football team. He also reportedly ran a sub-4.3 40-yard dash and will play in the NFL next season.

Shaun White, also not the average Winter Olympian, has won so many X game championships at the age of 19 it’s scary. He not only won the snowboarding championships, but he added wheels to his board and won all of the skateboarding medals.

The problem is the other competitors. I’ll keep the television on to watch the two aforementioned athletes, but I watch the other competitors and don’t feel as athletically inferior, I can pop in old highlight films of myself if I want to see pretty good. I want to be wowed by my athlete. I heard a story of a 47-year-old man, who is a professor at Drexel and is the favorite in his sport. Are you serious?

Jerry Seinfeld has a stand up commentary about the Luge, it’s the only sport you can win even if you don’t want to compete. You can get kidnapped off the street and put into an icy groove and fly past the competition.

So I’ll tune in on occasion, mostly to feel superior because the United States is nasty, or because some of the snowboard women are sublime; but for the most part I can hold my breath until the Summer Olympics to get my fix for the five rings.

Ian Gold is a senior in communications. He can be reached at [email protected].