Kvetchathon Elevates Whining About Olympics to Demonstration Sport

LONDON.  Mike Thorgrimsen is warming up for his event at the Olympics, but he's not stretching out on a track infield or practicing his start out of the blocks.  Instead, he's sitting in his hotel room, a remote control in his hand, as he barks at a television.  "Bob Costas makes me puke," he says in angry yet measured tone.

"Good," his coach Ty Crosby says with approval.  "Pace yourself."

"Give me a break," Thorgrimsen says as he watches the qualifying round of the women's gymnastics.  "That French judge is obviously banging Little Miss Balance Beam."

"Okay," Crosby says calmly, "Now start your kick to the finish."

"Let's see, a remake of 'On the Waterfront' shot on the Thames?"

"The official smokeless tobacco of the Olympics?" Thorgrimsen explodes as he hurls the remote at the set.  "It's all so commercial!"

Thorgrimsen will get his chance to appear on television himself today as part of the first-ever Olympic Kvetchathon, a grueling three-day test of athletes' ability to maintain a high level of dudgeon over the games themselves.  "Some of these guys have been complaining since Lake Placid in 1980," says Merle "Bud" Weiss, a resident of Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey who is an alternate on the U.S. team.  "They're out-of-shape and raring to go."

"C'mon--hit somebody, would you?"

The Kvetchathon is modeled on the decathlon, with ten subjects of complaint ranging from commercialism, jingoism and the American team's uniforms to the mustaches that adorn the upper lips of Russian women swimmers.  "It's not enough to be overpowering in a single event," says long-time Olympic commentator Harold Decature.  "You have to be able to spew venom on a wide variety of topics."

"Her belly-button is an outie."

Depending upon live attendance at London events and television ratings the Kvetchathon could move from demonstration status to an official event as early as 2016, but the athletes who've invested so much in training, snack foods and soft drinks say they won't get their hopes up.  "I'd like to think it would be determined on merit," says Thorgrimsen, "but everybody knows the Olympics is fixed."