The 1988 Olympics

Do you remember the 1988 Olympics? In Seouls, Korea?

I sure do.

I remember Ben Johnson from Canada winning the 100 yard dash in blazing speed, beating Carl Lewis, only to be disqualified later when he tested positive for using performance enhancing drugs.


I remember Greg Louganis hitting his head on the diving board, and still wining gold.


I remember Byun Jong-Il losing his bout in boxing and then refusing to leave the ring as he sat for hours in protest. Sorry there were no youtube videos, most people probably don't remember it as a highlight.

I remember watching Janet Evans, with her unconventional straight armed stroke style winning 3 Olympic Golds, and setting some world records also.


I remember watching Matt Biondi winning 5 Gold medals in the pool, it would have been 6 had he not glided to the wall at the end of the 100 meter fly and was beaten by Anthony Nesty of Suriname, a guy from a country no one had ever heard of.


I remember watching Florence Griffith Joyner, and Jackie Joyner Kersee, and the horseback riding events.

I remember watching because in our family we watched it over and over and over again.

Growing up in the Middle East, we didn't really have television. We never watched Saturday morning cartoons. We had television pretty much only in the afternoon and evening, and it was interrupted for prayer time.

Needless to say we didn't watch television much, we really just watched tapes.

Sometime shortly after the summer of 1988, our family was given one of the best gifts we were ever given by my aunt and uncle. They had taped the entire television coverage of the 1988 Olympics. For our athletics loving, soccer playing, competitive swimming family, it was an awesome gift.

That was the first and only Olympics I had the opportunity to watch until I was a freshman in college and watched the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

When it was too hot to play outside, or we were bored, we could always agree to watch the games in Seoul, Korea.

Sometimes we watched it in chronological order, sometimes we just picked out the best tapes and watched those.

When I was in high school and college and was home for the break, and was jet lagged and awake in the middle of the night, my brothers and I would pop in the tapes of the 1988 Olympics.

With the frequency that we watched those tapes (there were about 16-20 of them?) it's amazing that they lasted.

Ironically, we weren't the only family in our small town that had a set of tapes of the 1988 Olympics.

The summer after my parents moved back to the United States, my younger brother and I were sitting at our parents' new home in Michigan. I suggested that we pop in a tape of the 1988 Olympics. My brother liked the idea, and as he got up to choose a tape, my mom tried to hide her face.

"Mom where are they?" he asked.

At that point my parents were still unpacking boxes.

"We didn't bring them back." she admitted.

It was a logical decision by my parents who had packed up while my brothers and I were away at school.

But it was sad, and every time I visit my parents' home, I feel like something is missing.