In my opinion, the true enemy is not the average fan who dabbled in a sport and identifies with elite athletes. Rather, the enemy is the average fan who dabbled in a sport and feels entitled to lecture to elite athletes (from the safety of the couch, natch) about how best to perform. This includes the commentators on NBC.

These superior types make my blood boil, and I'm not even an athlete. Listing to one NBC commentator smug about how the Romanian gymnasts lacked the proper "intensity" now that they were no longer terrified for their lives to lose, or rail on and on about one American gymnast's mistake, I wanted to hurl my chair through the TV screen. I muted it instead, but that smug commentator was still going, grating the ears of millions of other viewers.

I think almost everyone who has been a professional at something has mixed feelings about others' attempts to identify. I can imagine that a Wall Street professional feels much the same way as Ms. Sey when a neighbor or friend brags about a "killer investment." Many of you have spoken about growing up and understanding the connection people try to make far more eloquently than I could.

What I have to say is pretty simple. No, I'm not an athlete. Never have been, never will be. But by now I've read enough about doping, starving, performing while injured, and suffering under abusive coaches enough to realize that, for the most part, I don't care to identify with professional athletes. I watch very few sports, and the list gets shorter each year.

As for the Olympics, with all its jingoism, amped up emotion, and athletes who have sacrificed everything for a possible few seconds of glory (that at least some resent me from trying to share), I'm over it. Haven't watched one minute and don't plan to. I think I'll stick with the amateurs. They have less to brag about, for sure, but also less to be bitter about.

I can't believe your editors allowed this to go live. I guess the controversy factor along with your "self-awareness" on the matter made it seem like a viable piece.

Your instincts to hide your feelings of superiority were correct and you should have. I'll never read you again and I bet there are many, many others not taking time to write a letter in who won't either.

I loved Nadia and fell in love with gymnastics as a child. I spent hours on the playground doing walkovers and cartwheels and doing my best. I took a little gymnastics but mostly my poor parents couldn't afford lessons. Also as I got older they decided, as they were fundamentalist Christians, that it was inappropriate for a young lady to wear leotards and flip around. Most of us have a story like this, just so you know.

I never come onto articles and "troll" or "flame" but this time I have to just at least second (or hundred-- haven't read all the other letters) your opinion that you're a jerk.

A fair number of letter writers assume that most elite sports have a fan base -- they don't. Athletes train and compete without money or fans. I follow swimming. I've never met another non-swimming person, whom I can talk with about swimming (other than during the Olympics). Most Olympic sports do not have a fan base. Most people watch the sports once every four years. Even then, many of the Olympic sports never make it to TV at all. None other than those expected to get Gold medals get adverstising sponsors. Olympians compete for the sake of competing. Olympic athletes seldom have a broad range of fans, and they don't need them.

After you Google her, go to YouTube--you can watch the videos of her, that she apparently posted herself, under the named ChalkedUp--the title of her book.

Self-promoting just a tad, here and there.

Years ago, I went into a high-end bike shop, owned and operated by self-proclaimed "Former Olympian." I had every intention of buying a $1500-plus road bike then and there.

"The Former Olympian" would roll his eyes whenever I referenced a personal cycling experience that pertained to the choice I had to make regarding the bike. I left after 15 minutes...without buyng a bike. And I never saw the olympics in quite the same way.

Like the author of this article, this "former olympian" was a better athlete than a person.

Unlike the author of this article, "the former olympian" really was a olympian.

I'm ambivalent because as a Ph.D. trained as a historian, it's annoying when people think that they can write up some memoir or history of a town and think they know what they're doing, but then again: history is a web of experiences, and recording those experiences might not meet "professional standards," but it does connect us to the web just a little more completely. I used to bristle when, after I explained that I had a Ph.D. in history, someone would say, "I love history, I'm a real Civil War buff," or something along those lines. I don't anymore.

I think Sey wants to get that point, but is just a little too connected to her former elite self to really get the fact that people feel a connection to the elite athlete, even if the elite athlete might not recognize it. The kid playing stickball in 1950s New York was Mickey Mantle, just as the kid playing basketball in the park is Dwayne Wade (or any appropriate superstar.

That's what Sey fails to grasp, and that's really sad.

To your claim that your acquaintance didn't "swim" the 400 meter freestyle in high school. I ran track and field and cross country in high school. I practiced year round for it, sometimes multiple times a day. I was never an elite runner, by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't claim to understand what that's like, but I took running very seriously at the time and I'm proud of that. Are you telling me I didn't "run"? Oh, I see, I was just floating on the track? A lazy blob.

Those of us who don't have deep sided childhood issues are trying to actually enjoy the Olympics! I suggest you just keep quiet and leave us alone.