Where's my Olympic spirit?

Like many others people, I used to get excited about the Olympic season and whenever I could, was stuck on TV to catch everything possible.

Time, cynicism, too many superfluous events, scandals of all kinds, runaway costs (particularly at Sochi), unbridled commercialism, dumb TV commercials, poor TV programming, inconvenient schedules, and crass chauvinism have eroded that enthusiasm.

For me, the bottom line is that each Olympic event is nothing more than another race, or put it into an athlete perspective, another day in the office.

I'll watch some skiing and some ice-skating and that will be about it. I stay away from opening and closing ceremonies have grown to be over the top and an escalation in cost, complexity and pagentry.

In fact, over the years, at small doses, by tweaking its own little formula on its own and focusing too much on its navel, the IOC has done everything it possibly could to choke the goose that laid the gold medals.