Carly Patterson = Tara Lipinski?

I've been watching the Olympics fanatically, or as fanatically as one can watch them when one doesn't have a television. And as fanatically as one can watch them on someone else's television when one already knows the outcome of events because of fanatically checking the New York Times for updates. But, for all that, still pretty fanatically. I didn't, by coincidence, know the outcome of the men's all-around gymnastics final; it turns out though, sports movies with the exact same plot are actually edited better, so still more exciting.
As I was watching some swimming event yesterday it occurred to me how really, really weird it is that we live in a world where human beings spend their entire lives training to swim back and forth in water as fast as they possibly can. For no reason. Just to see if they can go back and forth in water faster than any other human being has before. And really, all those swimmers who just qualify or get booted in the semi-final who have donated the first 20 years of their life to swimming know they aren't faster. They're just doing it because they like it. Which is as good a reason as any, I guess. And I really do like to watch swimming, so I'm happy that there are these people who just do nothing but swim, but swimming of this kind is pretty obviously of absolutely no use to anyone anywhere.