Editor’s Letter

By

striscia

The 2014 Winter Olympics may be the first quantified games in history. Sure, coaches have been standing by with stopwatches and clipboards since, well, some dude sprinted down dusty roads in sandals, probably. But now, there’s an app for that.

Elite athletes are using apps to keep them on top of their game – physically and mentally. We talked to Steve Portenga, who has worked with winter and summer Olympians, and created iPerformancePsychology to help give the rest of us the winning mindset. He admits there’s less to be done about your hopeless snowplow on the bunny slope, but more on that in the story.

I’m excited about these apps, and that’s saying a lot. There are only two times you’ll find me interested in sports: the Olympics and the World Cup. Even then, it’s usually not so much the sport that captivates me — though the winter games have the edge when it comes to mesmerizing sequins — it’s the epic international battles played out in the name of gymnastics or soccer.

When the question of who lands on the podium speaks to age-old predilections rather than strictly by GDP, things get interesting. Norway, for example, is a nation of just five million souls but is expected to make mammoth countries like the U.S. eat ice dust in Sochi. Jamaica’s bobsled team, which qualified for the first time since 2002, is coming to Russia courtesy an international crowdfunding campaign. I plan to re-arrange my schedule to view all of their matches. And what about host country Russia? Can pumping millions into sports bring back the glory days, especially after the embarrassing showing in Vancouver? The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat take on a larger meaning when countries go for for the gold.

Once again, I’ll be watching exclusively on my MacBook Pro, iPhone or iPad. (When I moved back to San Francisco from Milan with exactly four boxes, buying a set never became a priority.) Watching sports this way brings interesting aspects to viewing not limited to the tiny screen and intermittent buffering. For instance, I ended up watching the last World Cup entirely in Spanish, which definitely has an edge over the more buttoned-down English-language commentary. Note to U.S. broadcasters: you really need to hire a guy to give rat-a-tat-tat play-by-play climaxing in “GOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL!” People would watch soccer, then.

Fortunately, this time around our own Charlie Sorrel has chimed in with all the tips you need to watch without a traditional TV. And we’re off, for 18 days of sport!

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