(Tongue still firmly in cheek)

I was a failed athlete.

I played soccer at a very low level, but still higher than most people attain. I was the number 2 goalie on a Canadian second division college team. And when I say that I'm a failed athlete, I mean to say that it wasn't through lack of effort. I worked awfully hard to stay in shape, to sharpen my skills, all of it-and I just wasn't good enough.

So one day when I was 19 the team was driving to a crappy little tournament in a crappy little Maine town, and I was sitting in the bus and thinking about the starting lineup for the next day (I wasn't in it) and it hit me like an epiphany that this was as high as I was going to get. I had this vision of all of the soccer players in the world, arranged into a pyramid with impossibly steep sides, with the guys you see in the World Cup at the very top and me, dizzyingly far below that level, with the sides of the pyramid spreading out, until finally you got way down to where I was, not all that far above the base. And it was sobering for a second, because I think most guys would have liked to have been an elite athlete, and while I must subconsciously have realized that it wasn't going to happen to me, this was my conscious mind finally acknowledging that not only was it not going to happen, I wasn't even going to get to the point where I'd feel like I could relate to the guys even a few rungs up on this pyramid that I envisioned.

And as I say it was sobering. And then, more or less immediately, I relaxed about it. It was freeing to put that impossible dream aside. I kept working hard, kept improving, and while I never got to start (we had a monster goalie who was the same age as me) by the end of it I was a pretty good player for the level I was at. It was enough for me.

So I understand what you're saying, Jennifer. I don't think our athletic experience are comparable, and I can understand why someone who was talented and driven enough to sacrifice what it takes to be an elite athlete would be irritated at people would presume that they shared experiences like that when they really hadn't even come close to doing that. I certainly never came close to sacrificing that much, and I strongly doubt I could have if I'd had the talent. So while I was initially rather offput by this article, I think I understand where you're coming from.

I'm not quite sure why I started writing this. Perhaps getting to the top of the pile requires an ability to shut out the odds against you that I, with my more-or-less instantaneous acceptance of my athletic inferiority, just can't comprehend. But I do think that a serious application to athletics-which I did do, at least for a while-can deepen a spectator's appreciation for what the athletes go through for their sport. We don't all think we missed the podium by that much.

I have never been an athlete. True, I enjoyed a few things as a participant when I was younger. And I appreciate some now that I am graying and know that still trying to be a participant would likely result in unpleasant injuries.

And Jennifer, you are no longer an athlete. Now, you are only a bitter woman who can't let go of her former pursuits. I hope your children do not bear the weight of your bitterness and frustrations. The potential for that is there, of course, as you seem to relish going back over your earlier days and reveling in the suffering others - and you - inflicted on yourself.

And I have, in my professional life, encountered many elite athletes (I will mention no names), and elites in other areas of enterprise, and one thing runs true: The very best of the class of any field are universally also solid, complete human beings, with real understanding of life beyond their own skins.

It is only the almost-weres who base their entire lives on their own selves. You will forever occupy that class.

I don't claim to be an elite anything. I'm just a guy who is good enough at what he does to make a reasonable living at it, and who has a good enough education to be able to understand that there are things beyond my own self and my own life that I can appreciate while never being able to aspire to them in any real way. So I'll continue to watch NCAA and NBA basketball, and remain a Cub fan, and watch the Olympics, and understand that these are all people with very rarefied talents, who have spent uncountable hours turning those talents into amazing skills, and in the bargain, been able to suppress the nerves many if not all of us have at performing literally anything in front of an audience of strangers. And I will marvel at all of that.

And I will spare not one more minute beyond writing this thinking about your bitter, lonely, self-centered simulacrum of an adult life.

Gymnastics isn't really a sport. It's just a scored exhibition, kind of like a dog show or a beauty pageant.

Gymnasts are no more "Athletes" than acrobats or other circus performers.

Judging people on their "form" in a "routine" isn't a true sport and it's practitioners are mere performers, not athletes.

find an actual sport. how are you going to talk smack when all you did is flip around in the air. F-off. Only thing good about gymnasts are that they are flexible enough to be fun in bed. and for the poster who talks about running being so much more than jogging...are you serious? Get a life, loser. I hope you trip and break your ankle, a$$.

I did crew in high school. I was very certain even in my youth that I wasn't going to be an elite athlete and I have maintained a certain level of mediocre ability ever since.

But it makes me interested in watching the rowing. I don't imagine I could have made the Olympics when I watch. I just enjoy watching a sport that rarely gets televised otherwise or rarely gets any coverage in sports blogs. I think about the fact that a gold medal in rowing won't get you any post Olympic endorsements or Good Morning America interviews and it still remains largely an amateur sport that people do because they love it. It takes unbelievable commitment and there isn't much glory.

Not everybody watching has youthful delusions of competence and stardom.