Olympics update, dateline August 7, 2012

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I am enjoying the Olympics this summer.  They are chock-full of peculiar stories, and give me many a laugh and tear.

 

 

For example:

 

 

There was a badminton scandal. Apparently, eight players from South Korea, Indonesia, and China were throwing their own matches, in order to play against (and presumably beat) lower-ranked teams. The press threw up a couple of images of indignant badminton players, which were pretty funny; also there was a spate of badminton jokes on television. My favorite was: “Isn’t badminton something you play at your family reunion?”

 

 

A man with no lower legs or feet is competing in a track-and-field event. Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, who was born without fibulae and had his legs amputated below the knees in childhood (see photo above), uses “running blades” to compete. He does pretty well. There has been a sniffy little argument about whether the blades give him an unfair advantage; they’re pretty bouncy, apparently, but they also give him a disadvantage at the beginning of the race, so it sort of balances out. And, says I, what’s stopping the other runners from having their legs amputated and using blades themselves? I know that I myself would not be able even to stand upright on running blades. So: good on Oscar Pistorius, as my British friends would say.

 

 

Doping has entered the GATTACA era. A Chinese swimmer won her race by swimming at unbelievable speed. An American official insisted she must either have been doping, or – more insidiously – undergone some kind of genetic modification. (This is all the rage at the moment – have you seen the trailer for the new Bourne movie?) The Financial Times ran a very sober article about this last week, citing the example of “Marathon Mouse,” which (after genetic modification) can run twenty-five times farther than an average mouse. This is creepy, and (to date) undetectable. Who can say what's going on?

 

 

Upsets are fun to watch.  Why do we root for someone who’s already a champion? Isn’t it more fun to watch an underdog win? I hate tennis, normally – it’s just bip-bap-bip-bap to me – but I was lucky enough to tune in on Sunday just as Andy Murray aced his match point past Roger Federer, and I thought that was just fine. I hate to see the same six or seven people winning all the time. (Hear that, Michael Phelps?)

 

 

I’m baffled as to why some sports are in the Olympics and others aren’t. I’ve made fun of badminton today, and trampoline last week. One of my colleagues at work thought “canoe slalom” was a person’s name rather than an event. And yet: no lacrosse in the Olympics. No squash. No cricket. No camogie. (Usually it’s because they’re not universally played. Lacrosse, for example, is pretty much limited to the US and Canada. Cricket is popular in the UK and a handful of Commonwealth / former Commonwealth nations. Camogie – well, give yourself ten points if you even know what camogie is. But what about rugby?)

 

 

Now and then it makes sense to me why something is an Olympic sport. Judo and taekwondo, for example: it’s easy to train for these, and inexpensive – all you need is a bathrobe and a floor mat.  There were dojos everywhere in North Africa when I was there in the 1980s. Archery and shooting are modern transformations of hunting skills. Wrestling is about as primal as you can get. (Also, it’s fun to watch.)

 

 

I’ve been learning stuff every day through these Olympics. I hope it continues right through the closing ceremonies, when (according to the Financial Times) the seven young athletes from the opening ceremony will hand the Olympic flag over to seven elderly CEOs, who will bill back the young athletes for tuition fees.

 

 

More soon.

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Tough girls: Olympics edition

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The Olympics sometimes gives us athletes with nice backstories. This year is especially fruitful in that regard.

 

 

(Not so much with the guys. We were just told – by his mother! – that Ryan Lochte likes one-night stands best. Also, Michael Phelps is looking and acting more like a douchebag every single day. Let them have their various medals, and they can go stand in the corner.)

 

 

Now let’s talk about the girls.

 

 

Tough girl number one: Kayla Harrison, 22 years old, is the first American to win a gold medal in judo. This alone is a wonderful thing. But listen: she was abused by her first judo instructor, one Daniel Doyle. She hated judo, naturally, because she associated it with her abuser. Then, at the age of 16, she came to a place with the unlikely name of Pedro’s Judo Center, in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and the father-and-son team of trainers there worked with her, and showed her what she could become.

 

 

Six years later, she is an Olympic gold medalist in the sport she hated.

 

 

Here’s another tough girl: Gabrielle Douglas. At sixteen, she won the gold in all-around gymnastics. Her form looked perfect, even to a nearsighted old gaffer like me. Apparently, it looked that way to the judges too. She’s been dubbed “the flying squirrel” because (I guess) of how tiny she is. Can’t we come up with something nicer than that? (How about “the Seagull”? Because she is beautiful as she flies.)

 

 

(I remember Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci in the 1970s and 1980s, and even in those Cold War years, we Americans still marveled at them. Now, in 2012, we have someone else to marvel at.)

 

 

Third tough girl: a British weightlifter, eighteen years old, named Zoe Smith.

 

 

People were writing online that she was “manly” and “unfeminine.”  She responded as follows:

 

 

[We] don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest, most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence.

 

 

Oh but wait, you aren’t. This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any women with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble. 

 

 

As an acquaintance on Tumblr said the other day: I wish that I’d been that smart and verbal and logical at eighteen. Evidently, being strong doesn’t keep you from being smart, even when you’re a girl.

 

 

And number four: Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, a Saudi competitor in judo. She lost. But she was cheered by everyone, as one of the first two Saudi women ever to compete in the Olympics.

 

 

“Hopefully,” she said, “this is the beginning of a new era.”

 

 

Sister, we can only hope.

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