Up close and personal...

The Winter Olympics are well underway, and a local sportswriter wrote disparagingly this morning, saying no one is watching or interested because there are no stars.

I beg to differ. I'm old enough to remember Jim McKay and the "Up Close and Personal" segments on the athletes - not just the US athletes, but also athletes from other countries who might be complete unknowns to the US audience.

It was a great way to follow the Olympics, and I often found myself rooting for people like Soviet skaters Irina Rodnina and Alexander Zaitsev after hearing their stories. I discovered the incredible Jean-Claude Killy, and learned about the Norwegian ski-jumpers. It broadened my world to see sports I'd never seen like luge, and realize that athletes in other countries had the same hopes and dreams as the US athletes.

So, my original intention was to write about how this time I’m watching curling and beginning to understand how it works, and enjoying athletes from other countries, not just the US athletes. In a way, I enjoy our athletes more because I see them as part of a greater whole.

But when I started to write about Jim McKay, I found myself remembering how he anchored the coverage of the terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes in Munich, and the weight of grief in his voice when he announced that they were all dead. He is the only sportscaster to win a news Emmy, which he won for that coverage.

He was the host of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and you always wanted to tune in because you never knew what or who you might see. He had a gift for fitting in no matter the sport or the athlete.

For a time, he covered the Triple Crown, and although it was hard to let go of the quirky Heywood Hale Broun and the great Jack Whittaker, I came to love Jim McKay at the Kentucky Derby as well. It seemed he had the same affinity with the horses that he did with the human athletes.

More than any broadcaster, sports, news or commentary, Jim McKay was the embodiment of the spirit of the Olympics. His genuine expression of interest and wonder made our common humanity a reality, even if only for an hour and a half, or a week or two.

Take care,

Doc