🕓 Olympics are always at the wrong hour for me and I've given up

Four in the morning. That's when the swimming final I cared about was on last Olympics. I set 3 alarms and slept through 2 of them. I woke up for the third and missed the start anyway. Every time it's the same. My events land at some brutal hour here, and the host country gets a nice evening. A badminton match I'd circled on my calendar started at half past 3. I tried recording a match once, then avoiding my phone for a whole day so I'd stay spoiler free. I didn't look at news, I walked past colleagues with my eyes down, and I even skipped the group chat. I made it about 6 hours. In the lunch queue at work somebody said the result out loud. He didn't even know he was doing it. He was just talking about his weekend. A cousin of mine on the US west coast has the same problem with different events. So it moves around the world depending on who hosts, and somebody is always up at 3. I've mostly stopped trying to watch live. I check results over coffee the next morning. It's easier on my sleep, but it feels a bit like reading the last page of a book first. The tension is the whole fun of it, and you can't get that from a news headline. Last time I tried staying up for one event and I fell asleep on the sofa during the final. My roommate woke me up to tell me the winner. I wasn't even upset, which is worrying. Does anyone stay committed for the full 2 weeks, or does everybody quit around day 4?

I'm the opposite and I stay up for all of it. I take leave from work in the second week. My trick is naps, 2 hours in the evening and then the finals at 2 a.m. with strong coffee. The mornings after are awful, I can't deny that. I once put the milk in the cupboard. But I'd rather be tired than know the result before I see it.

I missed a whole swimming final last time because my phone buzzed with the result at 6 a.m. A news app sent it before I'd opened my eyes. I threw the phone across the bed. Now I switch off every notification for 2 weeks during the games. My family thinks it's strange. It's easy to do, and it saves the best bit, not knowing how it ends.