When you watch competitions like the Olympics, you really can’t expect to see a little bit of yourself in the athletes. The closest I have ever gotten was watching a guy who knocked the snot out of me in a high school wrestling tournament win bronze 15 years later in Sydney.

Usually, we watch people so accomplished we have trouble making a connection. They are incredibly flexible and talented and fit. But every once in a while, we get a chance to see someone just like us competing.

This time we got two of them, and they ended the Games with very different stories. Steve Holcomb gave portly guys everywhere a chance to cheer while John Shuster reminded us that bartending Olympic champions generally only happen in the movies.

Holcomb drove the four-man bobsled team to a performance we all should remember even as we’re trying to blot the image of Holcomb – all 5-10, 231 of him- iin a skin-tight racing suit from our mind.

He did not look like an elite athlete, but he doesn’t need to when his most important skill is driving the sled. He does that better than anyone, setting the Whisler track record twice on the way to the gold. Gravity from his body type may have a little to do with that, but who am I to argue.

We wish we had such fond memories of Shuster, who has a bronze medal from his effort in the 2006 Games. The difference between that time and the past two weeks was that the Minnesota bartender was a cog in the 2006 team, but the leader of the most recent team.

I’m not trying to rag on Shuster too much because he’s not some stooge who just took up the sport, but the reality is that he really didn’t have what it took to lead a team on such a big stage. If he had missed one or two crucial shots, we could just look the other way. But he missed most of them, giving tubby guys who like to serve and drink beer a bad name. Maybe he needed a brew handy during the competition.

The end result is that US Curling will probably look to change the way they choose the Olympic team – to be fair this is probably a good idea since Shuster’s team clinched its spot a year before the Games with an upset win at the trials after losing three games in the preliminary round of the trials and edging the favorites by one point in the finals. So tubby guys may actually give way to athletes.

The good news is that Canada won the gold with a skip who looks like Ned Ryerson, so we can probably rest assured that some subset of goofy men will rule the day in the sport somehow.