Ravelympics.

So!  That.  Wow.  For those of you who don't know what's going on the US Olympic Committee sent a cease and desist letter to Ravelry for it's use of the term Ravelympics.  Which, fine.  Ok.  I get it.  Trademark sucks and blah di blah.  However in the letter they said this:

We believe using the name "Ravelympics" for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games.  In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country's finest athlete...

Excuse me?  I'm doing what now?  By spending HOURS watching your coverage and also by the way knitting I'm disrespecting you?  Then they said this:

...fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

Record scratch.  Ok, now I'm pist.  Really pist.  Because I guarantee you that my last Olympic effort was just that.  An Olympic effort.  A beginning knitter, or even an advanced knitter could not have pulled this off in two weeks:

Traditional stranded sweater redesigned and knit in 2 weeks.

Seriously.  That is hard work.  That is years of training in action.  That is stretching yourself beyond the limits of what you thought you were capable of.  That is everything the motherfucking Olympic spirit stands for.

And a good part of me wants to go on a huge rant about how the ugly underbelly of this whole debacle is this:

Sports = male pursuit = good, worthy, hard, profitable
Knitting = female pursuit = worthless, cute, unnecessary, not profitable

But.  They have apologized.  Twice, actually.  And I want to be a bigger person and accept their apology.  However it all seems.... hollow.  A pat on the head to all the crazy (because a female can't get upset about something without that word coming out) knitters out there so that we go away.

I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet.  I have very much enjoyed participating in the 3 Knitting Olympics that have been organized so far.  I was hoping for a redemption on my last triathlon for this Summer Games.  I've even started training specifically for it (and YES it is training even if I am spinning instead of sprinting).   But at this point I just want to watch some X-games and get the taste of this whole debacle out of my mouth.

What do you guys think?  Are you still going to participate / watch this year?

Edited to add:  I wanted to throw up a few links to what others have been saying about all of this.  The Yarn Harlot had a great voice of reason post,  the Crochet Liberation Front has a fantastic Open Letter to the US Olympic Committee which speaks to the craft vs sports issues in a much more eloquent way, and WIP Insanity writes about the apology and second apology which has the best quote ever in it:

We are yarncrafters. Fear us.