OUR VIEW

Heart? Beating and good to go. Check!

Flag? Got one around here somewhere, plus some attire left over from a couple weeks ago. Check!

Friday, we’ll take a moment out of our busy summer as we do every four years and see what’s happening in the Olympics. The 2020 games in Tokyo were delayed by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic — so it’s the fifth year and the next is just three away — but have finally arrived with plenty being talked about before the torch is lit in Olympic Stadium.

And “talked about” refers to things away from the competition area.

Throughout our lifetimes, the Olympics have been a time to appreciate the sports that day-to-day mostly fly under the radar. Sure, there’s some basketball and track people we know and love, a little soccer, maybe a swimmer or two.

But overall, the 46 sports competitions include a number of them that we have little idea existed — much less who performs in them. Maybe we’ve heard of the 3-on-3 basketball and rhythmic gymnastics in addition to their more popular cousins, but we’ll give bonus points for those naming competitors in trampoline gymnastics, either of the canoe slalom or canoe sprint, or marathon swimming.

Is our beloved red, white and blue in all of those?

Are we leading the entire medals count? The most golds?

There’s not some kind of “overall” champion for those, but it’s still fun to watch how the USA does against all other countries. After all, who doesn’t want to be the best?

These will be unique games, and for more reasons than Tokyo being 13 hours ahead of Bladen County. We’ll see a lot on tape delay. There’ll be no missing the fact that the pandemic is still with us. The Opening Ceremony theme is “United by Emotion,” a nod “to reaffirm the role of sport and the value of the Olympic Games, to express our gratitude and admiration for the efforts we all made together over the past year, and also to bring a sense of hope for the future,” the official website says.

Seventeen days later, the Closing Ceremony will emphasize “Worlds we share” — a reminder the Games “provide us with food for thought about diversity and inclusion.”

Should be interesting.

Already on social media we know that, in an effort to stop intimacy by athletes, the Olympic Village has beds made of cardboard. True story. The beds are able to withstand the weight of a single person.

And we learned that the Village, this past Friday, already has its first positive tests for COVID-19.

Russia is in the Olympics, but not their flag or national colors. Sort of. It’s complicated. We’ll see ROC — Russian Olympic Committee — on our TVs but only the acronym, never the spelled out version. Nor will the country’s gold medalists hear their national anthem; it’ll be some music by Tchaikovsky.

There’s already controversy about South Korea banners, racism charges against Honduras from Germany, and the usual unrest that comes with what happens regarding security and people who live near Olympic competition sites — some of which Games officials and TV would rather us not see.

In other words, it being a fifth year hasn’t mattered too much. It’s still the Olympics, with all its fame and glory — and the warts.

So wave our colors, cheer for our athletes, and celebrate what we couldn’t enjoy from a summer ago.

Let’s hear it: “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”