Slate tracked NBC TV coverage summing up the number of times these “sappy” words were spoken:
… The London Games did indeed out-sap the 2008 Summer Games and the 2010 Winter Olympics—our count of 849 sappy words beat Beijing by 127 and blasted Vancouver by 178.
The bronze medal for the Sappiest Word of the Olympics is … a tie! Because we are kind and generous and sentimental, we will not go to a tiebreaker sap-off. Instead, parents and proud—each of which was uttered 61 times over NBC’s 17 days of coverage—will both earn bronze. The silver goes to dream, with 74 mentions. And after settling for second place in 2010, mom—emotional, inspirational, teary-eyed mom—has taken the gold as the Sappiest Word of the Olympics, standing atop the podium with 79 utterances. Congratulations, mom. You earned it. …
And what about the Sappiest Line of the Olympics?
It couldn’t belong to anyone else but NBC’s … Tim Daggett:… this to say about his experience winning gymnastics gold in 1984:
You can’t even describe the emotion. It’s like, take every emotion you have, put ’em in a blender. It felt like there were 10,000 volts of electricity running through my body. Everything was amplified to a point that I’ve really never since felt. But each and every one of us had a dream, and a little magic happened that day.
read more – The London Olympics Sap-o-Meter
Gymnastics Coaching.com 