If At First You Don't Succeed, Maybe Failure Is More Your Style

Track and Field events are a big snooze for me.  The folks at NBC pay over a billion dollars to broadcast the summer Olympics every four years, and try to get me excited about these finely-tuned machines, running fast in straight lines and occasionally jumping over things.  And every four years I respond with a deep, heartfelt yawn.    

Call me when you have to run down your dinner from behind

Once in a while, a video surfaces that brings a little more excitement to TnF and gets me to watch.  These types of videos usually involve less-finely tuned machines struggling to accomplish the same fetes as their Olympic superiors.  These are the true amateurs, the ones that train by playing Wii Track n' Field.

If running fast in a straight line is the upper limit of your athletic ability, let's throw in some obstacles to make things interesting.  We'll call them 'hurdles.'  Give it a try.  We'll tape it.  That way you can see what you did wrong and improve, and the internet can have some fun watching you fail.

I've been sitting on this video for a while, partly because it's kinda dickish to be laughing at these girls' struggles.  I'm sure many of you have already seen it.  For those who haven't, enjoy:

But failure is often funnier in slow motion.  With a soundtrack.  The soundtrack to this one is Radiohead's Creep, so there are a few naughty words. But it's sung by a choir, so it's beautiful, right?  Just try to tell me this isn't a thing of beauty:

I guess there's two sides to this coin.  It's kind of sweet to see her getting up every time she tanks it.  Sure, it can be used as a "never give up" motivational thing.  That doesn't mean it's not funny.  This was like a hybrid of track and baseball.  Someone should have told these two girls that you don't have to slide into the base after every hurdle.  

Maybe the IOC could consider making Baseball Track into an Olympic sport. (Heck, they let ribbon gymnastics in!)  Then I might watch.  But once you add the competitive factor and the coaches and the PEDs, it sorta loses its charm.  There's something more appealing, something special, about the unintentional stumbling and sliding of true amateurs.