I don't know if you're a jerk. depends on if you actually say this venal stuff out loud.

I was, at one time, a competitive skater. I was jersey state champion in my division and I ranked in the top twelve in the US that year. My sport is international but will probably never became an Olympic event because they already have ice skating and the fact that it's essentially the same, except it's done on roller skates. All skaters hope for a summer Olympics slot but they'll probably never get it. But they press on, skating cest la vie.

I was nowhere close to Olympian. I trained many hours a day but only a few days a week - as many days as I could get to the rink..life didn't revolve around me and my practice. I had some horrific injuries, including skating competition with a bone fracture in my foot. (this was made possible by a rockhard new boot.) Some weekends I'd get in two days/twenty hours of training plus what I could do during the week. But sometimes I didn't train at all. Sometimes I flaked off.

In the end, what the hell is all this anyway besides dramas to live and then look back on?

So I watch Olympics now. And I love those kids and I envy them, too. I watch them and it seems to me that this is a fantastic moment in time, even with the failures. This is THEIR moment of glory. And I share it a little bit. I FEEL their efforts because they remind me a tiny bit of my moments, however small in comparison. To me at the time, my moments weren't so small. They were MINE.

Get some therapy to get that chip off your shoulder. Sounds like you're more than a little pissed off. You were a lucky girl. Somebody funded you and trucked you around while you got to aspire to something greater than yourself.

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Almost anyone who does anything has to deal with the occasional opinionated-but-ignorant person. I run into it all the time:

The person who doesn't understand basic physics, thermodynamics or chemistry, let alone how an internal combustion engine really works, yet insists that the magical 200 mpg carburetor story is real.

The person who has all sorts of complaints about public education, yet never taught a class in their life, let alone tried to do it on limited resources for a whole school year.

The person with no kids who has all kinds of opinions on parenting, including how things like ADHD, autistic-spectrum disorders and other learning difficulties "aren't real", and proceeds to lecture struggling parents (who are having a rare couple of hours of adult time) who deal with real kids that have these problems.

The person who lectures a paleontologist and geologist that the earth is less than 7,000 years old.

The person who doesn't know a kilowatt-hour from a klystron, yet has all sorts of "facts" about the energy situation.

And lots more things that are much, much worse than "Mommy swam the 400 meter freestyle in high school."

Yet we non-elite types simply deal with it. In most situations we just smile and nod and change the subject. In others, we listen politely, then look the person straight in the eye and in a friendly, warm voice say: "No, that's just not true. You've got some bad info there. Here's how it really works..."

It's called real life.

Now instead of just having mainly responses from people who liked the article, and one from someone who didn't, it also has one telling people to go easy on the article. It also has one that is a complete non-sequitor about how everyone who buys something due to celebrity endorsement thinks they are as good as the celebrity.

Rather than going easy on Ms. Sey, why not just suggest that she read only the editor's picks?

Last week I was clicking through NBC's website, and came upon the gymnastics qualifying competition. They had every single person who was trying to get into the team finals, including the "Mixed Team" which is the team for the girls from countries that sent only one or two gymnasts. These are the girls that aren't going to get anywhere near the medal stand, the ones who are truly doing it just for the love of the sport and the chance to participate in world-class athletics. Watching them, you see what it takes for them to be good, but you also see what it takes for Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin to be phenomenal.

When you see this parade of USA-China-USA-China-USA-Russia-USA-China, you're seeing the epitome, not the range. You have nothing to compare it to, so the best of the best really do end up looking almost ordinary. But when you see the not-best of the best girls (the almost-best?) you can really appreciate why one vault is 12.19 and another is 15.4.

Maybe it's those 20th in the All-Around athletes that would make your friends realize what it takes to "really" be a gymnast.

I'm not an elite athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but I laugh at the number of people here who seem to think that MOST pro athletes don't sometimes feel the same way.

Can you imagine a bunch of pro QBs sitting in a room with a high-school star in some nothing league watching him criticize NFL players?

Same reaction. Guaranteed.

They might not say it, but they THINK it.

And you were absolutely right to write about it.

Bravo.

(Nice style, too.)

All those of you who are making analogies, consider this one: Famous biologist, who wrote several groundbreaking papers in her field, who spent her whole life in the lab and the field and the college classroom, finding that, because academia is ruthless and unrelenting, that the singleminded pursuit of her research was incompatible with a normal life and that her marriage failed and children were out of the question, that all she has now is her work and her cat, goes to a dinner party.

She's asked the question, "What do you do?" She doesn't expect anyone to be in awe of her (that would be embarrassing), or even understand what she's done. But she dreads answering, because the rest of the evening is filled with really stupid questions and comments, people insisting that evolution is just a theory and that there HAS to be a master designer, people who took biology in high school and thought it was easy and how scientists studying the effects of cow flatulence on global warming are wasting taxpayer money, and how they read a book about how vaccinations cause autism, and finally, a ten-minute lecture on an outdated theory that was taught in the speaker's daughter's high school biology class. Biologist explains that actually, this isn't true, and gets a pitying smile. Biologist is polite and encouraging through all these conversations. She goes home with a massive headache.

These people have not studied biology. They may have taken a class in biology, but they have not studied biology.

Yeah, after reading Sey's article and seeing a lot of these comments, I can sympathize. (I'm not a biologist, but I know how frustrating social interactions can be for experts when they encounter people who think their tiny bit of knowledge and experience qualifies them to hold forth on all kinds of subjects they really don't understand.)

The elite are different from you and me. Get over yourselves, and have a little respect, and maybe people like Sey, who sounds like she's outwardly a good sort, will be able to kill off their "inner jerks."