News · moment 4 of 19
Raven Saunders, Depression, and the New Horror-Story Olympics
from #254 - Apocalypse Olympics with Abby Martin | The Tim Dillon Show · #254
9 min
News
Tim reads and riffs on a CNN piece about shot-putter Raven Saunders' suicidal thoughts, turning it into an extended bit imagining increasingly horrific fictional Olympian backstories (rape, Nazism, eating disorders) as the new normal for inspirational sports narratives.
- Olympic athletes who don't medal end up destroyed—Tim's friend's sister went to the Olympics in volleyball and became a wreck with nothing to show for it.
- Olympic origin stories used to be heartwarming—now they're horror stories because life has become harrowing.
- Tim reads a CNN article about Raven Saunders: depression drove her close to suicide, and she discovered shot put.
- The article details Saunders sitting in her car, tempted to drive off a Mississippi highway drop-off into towering trees.
- Tim imagines CNN recreating her suicide drive, asking her to film the route and show them where she thought about driving off.
- If athletes don't place, it's curtains—Saunders came in fifth, so the spiral continued.
- Modern Olympics stories aren't cute anymore; they're all mental breakdowns: 'I wanted to hang myself, then I found synchronized swimming.'
- Tim conjures a backstory of an eating-disorder athlete who vomits everything but can compete because only her legs show underwater.
- After reading Saunders's story, Tim questions whether she should even compete—what happens if she loses again and ends up back at that highway?
- With COVID ravaging Japan, the Olympics will have memorials, lanterns for COVID dead, while people are still dying.
- Nobody believes anyone will actually make it to the Olympics—it's incredibly hard to qualify, so it doesn't motivate people.
- Tim hasn't heard anyone say 'did you see the Olympics' in ages; nobody cares who wins or whether America beats other countries.
- Olympic athletes are all on drugs—they have to test them nine times to stop them from skin-popping steroids right before competition.
- The Olympics is just a bunch of lab rats doping; Tim is uninspired and doesn't need to watch drug addicts run hurdles.
- Tim's take: skip the Olympics entirely—he doesn't need the stories about athletes raised by single mothers in the bayou overcoming adversity.
- On destigmatizing mental health: Tim begins a risky statement about who we should stop stigmatizing.
OlympicsRaven Saunders