AP Photo/Rob Carr

U.S. gymnast Chellsie Memmel loses her grip on the uneven bars during the women’s qualification rounds at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008.

I am the most annoying person to watch the Olympics with. I’m a condescending former elite athlete who loathes the armchair fan. I love sports. I love athletes. I hate fans.

I’m especially annoyed by those who believe their dalliances in amateur childhood athletics give them insight into the travails and accomplishments of Olympic athletes. Watching the women’s 400-meter individual medley with some friends, one lesser-known acquaintance gently whispered to her daughter, “Mommy swam the 400-meter freestyle in high school.”

No, you didn’t.

See? I’m horrible. But she didn’t. Technically, she stayed afloat. She swam back and forth in the pool. But her interpretation of this flywheel-type movement surely had nothing to do with what Britain’s Rebecca Adlington brought to bear on that pool in Beijing.

Adlington was fourth when the race was nearly 90 percent complete and she dug deep down to deploy a furious kick and overtake the United States’ Katie Hoff, who had led the entire race to that point.

That’s swimming the 400-meter freestyle.

Until recently, I’ve kept my gymnastics past to myself. For several reasons, not the least of which is that it is irrelevant in today’s grown-up world of kid raising and professional responsibilities. Another reason is that it unleashes a vile condescension that I prefer to keep under wraps.

But since I decided to write a book about my experiences as a gymnast in an effort to lock all the demons away, everyone I encounter on a daily basis now knows about my childhood history.

One co-worker approached me in the cafeteria after the women’s preliminary gymnastics event. Having read my book, she squealed, “I was a gymnast too!”

No, you weren’t.

Her me-too exuberance brought that ugly lady to the surface, the one I’ve tried so hard to conceal by denying she exists. Ashamed, I tried to eclipse my smug antipathy with a smile and an oh-really nod.

You loved Nadia and begged your mom to sign you up for gymnastics classes. You went two days a week until you were in junior high. But then your body developed and boys noticed and hanging out at the mall or trying out for the cheerleading squad seemed a lot more appealing than spending the afternoon in a chalky, musty gym scared out of your wits to do what the coach was demanding.

I was practicing 12 hours a week by the time I was 7, traveling up and down the New Jersey Turnpike each weekend for competitions. I moved away from home when I was 14, trained 40 hours a week while attending high school, endured untold abuses by overenthusiastic coaches who weighed me twice a day to make sure I didn’t inadvertently get fat during my seven-hour practice.

I broke my femur at the 1985 World Championships when I fell from the uneven bars on my last event of the competition. My parents ignored my depression and starvation, assuming I was happy because I won medals.

I did gymnastics.

See what I mean about this woman inside being horrifically ugly?

As much as viewers love watching these athletes defy human expectations, I’m not convinced that those who haven’t ever endured the trials and brutal training regimen required to compete at the Olympic level really understand what is entailed.

In watching a sport like gymnastics it’s easy for a viewer to see that she couldn’t perform a double twisting double back like Shawn Johnson on the floor exercise. But in sports like swimming or track, where the athletes are engaged in activities that regular people do all the time, I think there are many who believe it’s simply a little extra commitment that sets these athletes apart from the hoi polloi.

I get the feeling that regular folks believe that if they just had the heart to stick with it through 10th grade, they too would be celebrating on the medal stand in Beijing along with Michael Phelps and Dara Torres. But maybe I’m defensively projecting.

When watching water polo all I can think about is how hard it is as a not-so-thin, barely fit woman to tread water for more than two minutes. These Olympians do it for more than half an hour as easily as mortals stand on the ground. They kick in the water to keep themselves afloat without a rise in pulse rate, without getting even the slightest bit tired, without any thought whatsoever. They do it unthinkingly while they beat the crap out of one another and score goals.

Do Olympic fans understand how unimaginably hard it is to overcome fear, persevere through injury, come through in the clutch, give up one’s entire life in the name of a few possible yet unlikely moments of glory?

How devastating it is to be Chellsie Memmel, the 20-year-old former world champion gymnast who missed qualifying for the 2004 games, then gave up the past four years of her life to go to Beijing, only to compete in one event because of injury. And then fall. A lifetime reduced to 30 seconds of what must feel like failure.

I’m going to put the unsightly former athlete back in her closet where she belongs and watch agog at the rest of the games. And I will watch alone, where I can’t offend anybody by acting like a total jerk.

The South Korean city of Pyeongchang was awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics on Wednesday after failing in two previous attempts.

Pyeongchang defeated rivals Munich and Annecy, France, in the first round of a secret ballot of the International Olympic Committee.

Needing 48 votes for victory, Pyeongchang received 63 of the 95 votes cast. Munich received 25 and Annecy seven.

The Koreans had lost narrowly in previous bids for the 2010 and 2014 Olympics.

Pyeongchang will be the first city in Asia outside Japan to host the Winter Games. Japan held the games in Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998.

Olympic gold-medalist Lindsey Vonn has recreated that scene from “Basic Instinct” on the cover of ESPN magazine. And by “that scene” I do mean the one in which Sharon Stone infamously flashed her naughty bits to the world. It’s the magazine’s movie issue — why ESPN has a movie issue, I do not know — and it boasts a bunch of athletes reproducing classic film scenes. The headline accompanying the saucy cover photo is, wait for it, “Back to Basics.” Funny, I thought the magazine’s Body Issue — which came out just a few months ago and features exquisitely athletic naked bodies — was a return to “basics.” But it doesn’t get any more basic, or base, than paying homage to the most famous crotch shot in cinematic history.

London Olympic organizers say a record 5,000 doping tests will be carried out at the 2012 Games.

The local organizing committee has signed a memorandum of understanding with Britain’s anti-doping body and will implement the testing program under the authority of the International Olympic Committee.

London 2012 director of sport Debbie Jevans says the size of the testing program will give a “strong message that drug cheats are not welcome at the London Games.”

UK Anti-Doping will train anti-doping officials and assist them during the event to carry out a 10 percent increase on the 4,500 tests conducted at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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Canada’s women’s hockey team has scored quite the controversy by daring to celebrate their win against the U.S. on Thursday by sipping beer, guzzling champagne and smoking cigars on the ice. After the fans filtered out of the stadium, the ladies returned to the rink still in uniform with gold medals draped around their necks. They laid on the ice, poured champagne in each other’s mouths and soaked up the Olympic glory. Their revelry hardly would have garnered any attention, except for one minor detail: there was an Associated Press photographer on hand to capture it all on film.