I think my obsession started with the “Guinness Book of World Records.” We always had one lying around the house when I was a kid so you could check the distance of the longest grape toss which someone caught in their mouth.

The book also had lists of Olympic medalists in every sport. I used to study those lists and dream of my own Olympic glory. That’s how I ended up writing a sixth-grade essay about how I would defeat Roman Dmitriev, the Russian lightweight wrestler, to win my first gold medal in 1984.

Instead, I ended up in the seats at those Olympics watching with my two brothers. Dmitriev didn’t make it either because of the Soviet boycott, so I guess he gets half the blame for me not having my Olympic moment at 16. He had also retired at that point, but that’s extraneous to my fantasies.

I bring all this up because the 2012 Summer Olympics start this weekend. That means I feel a little distracted pretty much all the time. I don’t just get obsessed with who will win the wrestling competition. I get into pretty much everything.

Back in 1992 when NBC unveiled the much-maligned Triple Cast pay-per-view concept – they showed live footage on three channels for those crazy enough to pay – I might have been one of the first people to sign up.

We’re starting to get all the things that geek me out about the Olympics for free, mostly online. I don’t regret paying $100 bucks or so to watch wrestling preliminaries in the early morning back then, but am glad that I can get them much easier these days.

While I totally understand the great emotion associated with the Olympics, I try to avoid the schmaltzy coverage as much as I can. I’m a sucker for most of the stories, but I don’t need them once the actual competition starts.

I understand why the networks put together those kinds of packages though. The audience for the “Up Close and Personal” approach far outnumbers the people who will watch rowing heats without any real interest in rowing (that’s me).

That’s why I don’t get the furor over trying to keep results quiet before the prime-time broadcast. First of all, it’s pretty much impossible in this day and age. Secondly, if the majority of the viewers really based their interest solely on who won and who lost, they would have been clamoring for something like the Triple cast a long time ago instead of ignoring it and making the package a huge failure.

We all can enjoy the Olympics however we want. If you only want to see the highlights, enjoy the nightly coverage with the stories. If you want to sneak a peek at as many preliminary competitions as possible as they happen, you know how I feel.

That just means I have to figure out a way to fit my job, my family and the Olympics into the next few weeks. I really hope those first two understand my dilemma.