I see you a lot of you folks are still ranting on just because Ms. Sey's article hurt your wittle feelings because it put your largely mediocre and mostly leisure time or past athletic pursuits in perspective. Yeah, yeah you played baseball in Little League, swan in HS, did gymnastics when you were little, played basketball in the Y leagues, shuffled along and did a couple of marathons or a Corporate Challeneges, yadda, yadda, so you foolishly flatter yourselves and think you can compare yourselves to the elite in those sports because, after all, you are/were a baseball/basketball player, gymnast, runner, etc., too and you know how it is. No, you don't. The level they are doing it at is so far removed and so fundamentally different from what you did/do, that any comparison is laughable.

Ms. Sey's problem, which she openly acknowledges, is that she let's her inner jerk out and "tells" mediocre athletes that they are mediocre and nobody likes to be condescended to by their "betters". It is interesting though that a lot of people don't hesitate to condecend to others when they are the "better". I guess it's a case of whose Ox is being gored. Anyway, I'm not surprised at the ongoing indignation!!!! though it is amsuing that a lot of the "outrage" is some version of "Just because I sucked, doesn't mean I didn't do it". Okay. That's true I suppose but besides Sey's cheerfully rude point.

I certainly don't claim to speak for the other letter writers here who aren't lining up to congratulate Sey for spitting on them....

But this isn't really about hurt feelings - not to me anyways.

It's about megalomania from an unjustified source.

Look, if Michael Jordan wrote an article saying he couldn't stand when amateur b-ballers tried to relate to him, I wouldn't really care. I'd think that's kind of condescending on his part - but he won championships & played at the top level of the game. He may be a jerk - but at least he's earned the right, y'know?

But what if some whiny, bitter ex-college hoopster who got injured & never played in the NBA and never won a championship did the same thing? To quote a famous rapper: Ni**a, please! That player hasn't earned the right to hate on the masses.

Sey hasn't earned the right to hate on the masses - because, while she thinks otherwise, she was never an elite athlete.

Elite gymnasts are not defined by National or World Championships.

They are defined by the Olympics.

And "elite" gymnasts win medals. Otherwise they are just another one of many...i.e. NOT "elite".

Is this getting through to you? Because, with her delusions of grandeur, it will never get through to Sey.

I don't let the fact that I was never good enough to go pro as an athlete bother me. After all, most of you athletes are pretty fucking stupid from where I sit, i.e. way up atop the intellectual ladder.

You may think you know what it takes to really understand some intellectual matter or you may think that you can appreciate some great work of weastern literature. But the truth is, on a Seysian analysis, you're all a bunch of pikers, doomed to stumble blindly through life never being acquainted with the greatest accomplishments of your species, of whom you are inferior specimens when it comes to the attributes that really confer merit.

There are cheetahs that can outrun you and apes that can outlift you and dolphins that can outswim you. But there are no mere animals that can outperform a philosopher at philosophy or a mathematician at mathematics etc. etc. No, the distinctively superior human qualities have to do with intelligence, not athletics. And on that score, you all are doomed to go through life at a comparatively animalistic level.

God, you meatheads are so tiresome! It takes forever to get a simple argument through your thick skulls!

Hey, you guys all know that there's no such person as Jennifer Sey, and this was written (well, not "written," more like "words linked together into sentences") solely to piss people off and make them post replies and generate ad revenue, right?

You say, " . . . But we usually don't write about [our private thoughts] . . . in such a spiteful and graceless way.

That's exactly what's so great about Sey's piece. She let us behind the curtain of what it really feels like (at least for this person) to be an elite athlete. Despite her incredible genetic gifts, relentless work ethic and steadfast commitment, sometimes she's as mean and nasty inside as the rest of us.

Why is that such a shock? Why would that turn you off of watching the Olympics? Your statement confirms my theory that we unfairly expect our elite athletes to be superheroic in all ways and punish them when they are human. Just because these people can transcend physical limitations doesn't mean their minds and hearts do too. How do you know what Michael Phelps really thinks about you, the 10,000th person to ask for his autograph? How would you feel if you had his gifts? You'd be your same old self with a crazy strong body and lots of medals hanging around your neck.

Instead of ripping on Jennifer Sey, I'd be interested to explore why we demand such perfection of our athletes. Why do we turn on them like this when they expose their humanness, when they reveal deep down they're just like us? Jennifer Sey's piece makes me appreciate our elite athletes all the more. They're crummy sometimes, just like me. But look what they can do!

I found this, of all places, on a bottle of shower gel:

"How you climb up the mountain is just as important as how you get down the mountain. And so it is with life, which, for many of us, becomes one big gigantic test followed by one big gigantic lesson. In the end, it all comes down to one word -- grace. It's how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light."

Grace - what a concept.