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IN THIS ISSUE: Exclusive Olympics Edition FRONT ROW Olympic Sports: SIDELINES Announcements
FRONT ROW OLYMPIC SPORTS Are the Olympics About The Olympics is a glorious tradition. Every four years, thousands of athletes from hundreds of countries gather in one place for two weeks of nonstop competition to see who can trash the host country the most. Ah, the glory of sports. All the pre-hype publicity about the Beijing Games wasn’t about who would win the most bronzes, silvers, or golds but who would suffer the most Tibet guilt, Darfur fatigue, or smog reactions. It wasn’t about who would run the fastest or jump the highest but who would be repressed the most. It wasn’t about how many records would fall but how many menu items would have inadvertently naughty translations. U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth said, “When you accept an invitation to someone’s house, you don’t talk about how you don’t like the furniture or food.” No one denies that China has serious problems, but is the festive Olympic celebration the time and place to raise such issues? If so, then it’s only fair that those pointing a finger should be held equally accountable for the shortcomings of their own country. [lvrj.com/sports]
The motto of the Beijing Olympics was “One World, One Dream.” For years, many countries have taken that literally: Kenyan runners compete for Arab countries; Chinese table tennis players represent the Dominican Republic; American basketball players play for Russia, Germany, and Italy; Brazilian beach volleyball players participate for Georgia, which doesn’t even have beaches. And the U.S.? We import foreign sports mercenaries by the truckload: canoeist Heather Corrie (Great Britain), triathlete Matt Reed (New Zealand), world champion long-distance runner Bernard Lagat (Kenya), gold-medal-winning equestrian Phillip Dutton (Australia), and our entire male and female table-tennis teams (China) to name just a few. Keep National Purity Many are uncomfortable with the “irresistible temptation for rich, athletically challenged nations to purchase the services of athletes from poor countries for staggering amounts of money and perks – with citizenship thrown in,” said a writer for the Bangkok Post. The official residence of Jun Gao, one of America’s female table-tennis players, is Gaithersburg, Maryland, but she’s lived virtually full-time in Shanghai for the last six years. “I come back twice a year,” she told The New York Times. Go Team USA! When Georgia’s beach volleyball team defeated the Russians and spoke of their “families back home,” the Russians sarcastically reminded them that their families were from Rio de Janeiro. Georgian Olympic officials were undaunted. How else could they have competed otherwise, they argued? They have no beaches or the kind of weather or culture that developed the sport. Observed the Bangkok Post: “This would justify Thailand hiring the Detroit Red Wings to wear Thai colors and win the next Winter Olympics hockey tournament.” Allow Individual Freedom Some believe that detaching competitor identity from national identity is a good thing. It won’t detract from rooting for the home team (do we insist that our collegiate or pro athletes come from the cities they play for?) and can help diffuse national tensions (if the South Korean player beating the North Korean player is really from Iceland, so what?). “The Olympics used to be a form of surrogate warfare, wrote Peter Spiro on Opiniojuris.org. “If we couldn’t beat the Soviets on the battlefield, we could best them in the rink. Athletes were soldiers, of a sort.” Proponents say switching nationalities is good for athletes, too. “One cannot blame an individual athlete who is one of the world’s top runners for trying to seek domicile elsewhere when only three athletes per country may be delegated to the Olympics and he/she was outrun in the national qualifiers because his/her country belongs to the world’s top in long distance running,” stated a paper in the International Sports Law Journal. Besides, supporters say, it’s common and advantageous for all countries to naturalize “aliens of extraordinary ability” from other nations who may contribute great value to their society (doctors, scientists, artists, athletes, etc.). Brain drain, muscle drain, what’s the difference? Then There’s Becky Hammon Others point to South Dakota native and WNBA star Becky Hammon who, after not making the U.S. Olympic team, signed with a Russian club team for $2 million and joined the Russian national team. She was labeled a traitor by her ex-teammates. U.S. coach Anne Donovan told the Los Angeles Times, “If you play in this country and you grow up in this country and you put on a Russian uniform, you are not being patriotic.” After the game between the U.S. and Russia, U.S. player Lisa Leslie ignored Hammon during the postgame handshake ritual. “I didn’t acknowledge her because today she is Russian.” But she shook the other Russians’ hands. Hammon then complicated matters when she said: “During the national anthem, I was saying a prayer of thanksgiving that I’m an American.” [International Sports Law Journal, Jan-Apr 2006; nytimes.com, 6/15/08; San Diego Union-Tribune, 8/8/08; opiniojuris.org, 8/10/08; bangkokpost.com, 8/19/08; Los Angeles Times, 8/22/08]
Cuba’s Olympic Image According to the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), the traditional Korean martial art means “to suppress fighting and induce peace.” Well, apparently Cuba’s former Olympic gold medalist Angel Matos missed the day that lesson was taught. Leading 3-2 in his bronze medal match against Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov, Matos broke his toe and crumpled to the mat. Fighters are allowed a one-minute break for injuries. If they can’t continue, the match is forfeited to their opponent. Matos couldn’t continue, and the referee disqualified him. Matos angrily questioned the timing, claiming it was too quick. He pushed one of the judges. Then he kicked the Swedish referee in the face, drawing blood, before spitting on the mat and being pulled off the floor. Afterward, his coach Leudis Gonzalez defended the outburst, calling the referee “too strict.” In Cuba, 82-year-old Fidel Castro went further, accusing the Kazakhs of offering Matos money to throw the match. When he refused, the judges treated him unfairly. Castro expressed “total solidarity” for Matos and the coach. The WTF banned Matos and his coach for life. No word on what they’ll do with Castro. [wtf.org; newsvote.bbc.co.uk, 8/24/08; news.yahoo.com, 8/25/08]
Number 1: Swedish Greco-Roman wrestler Ara Abrahamian, the 2004 silver medalist in Athens, had high hopes of winning gold in Beijing. But in his semifinal against eventual gold medalist Andrea Minguzzi of Italy, a disputed penalty call decided the match for the Italian. Enraged, Abrahamian shouted at the referee and had to be restrained from going after the matside judges. Friends had to beg him to even compete in the consolation bronze medal match. He eventually did so, and won.
Then it really got weird. After the medal ceremony, Abrahamian took the bronze medal from around his neck, stepped down from the podium, and dropped it in the middle of the wrestling mat, announcing he was quitting the sport. “This will be my last match,” he said later. “I don’t care about this medal. I wanted gold.” Number 2: After China’s Tan Zongliang won the bronze medal for pistol shooting (later upgraded to silver when the silver medalist was disqualified for using a banned drug), he was approached by China’s CCTV television and the Shandong sports school’s vice president, both representing the Chinese state. It was Zongliang’s best finish ever in the Olympics. In 1996, he finished sixth. In 2000, he finished eleventh. And in 2004, he finished ninth in one competition and tenth in another. Expecting praise, he was instead berated for placing third. Bowing his head in front of national TV, he had to admit he had “let his country down.” [Associated Press, 8/19/08]
One week after tennis player Fernando Gonzalez, Chile’s flag-bearer in the Opening Ceremonies, spoke proudly of representing his country, he was questioned for dishonoring the sport and the Olympic ideal of sportsmanship. During the 18th game of a grueling third and deciding set in the semifinal match with American James Blake, Blake hit a backhand that went long. He contended that the ball hit Gonzalez’s racket (which replays later appeared to show). He appealed to the umpire, who said he didn’t see or hear it touch. Replays can only review line calls. That left the matter between the two players. Blake appealed to Gonzalez, who didn’t react. “Fernando looked me square in the eye and didn’t call it,” Blake said in a press conference afterward. “I’ve tried to play this game with integrity so my parents would be proud of the way I played. If that happened the other way, I never would have finished the match because my father would have pulled me off the court.” The Chilean went on to win the match and eventually the silver medal. His comment: “There is an umpire.” [washingtonpost.com, 8/15/08; Los Angeles Times, 8/16/08]
Well, there goes Spain’s bid to host the Games in Madrid in 2016 or 2020. In an inexplicable show of “affection” to their Chinese hosts, Spain’s entire men’s basketball team posed for a pre-Olympics advertisement in front of a Chinese dragon by pulling their eyelids back as if they were slit. The ad appeared in Spain’s best-selling newspaper, Marca. Later, its tennis team posed for a similar picture. The incidents were particularly glaring in light of Spain’s history of racial issues. In 2004, Spain’s soccer coach Luis Aragonés referred to French player Thierry Henry as a “black s..t.” That same year, monkey chants greeted England’s black football players in Madrid in a game that ironically launched the city’s international marketing campaign to host the Olympic Games there in 2012. Earlier this year in Barcelona, Formula One race driver Lewis Hamilton was subjected to racist comments and spectators wearing Afro wigs, black faces, and T-shirts with the slogan “Hamilton's Family.” After the photo fiasco, basketball guard José Calderón, who plays professionally for the Toronto Raptors, tried to clarify matters: “It seemed appropriate. We have great respect for the Orient and its people. Some of my best friends are of Chinese origin.” [yourfreepress.blogspot.com, 8/11/08; nytimes.com, 8/14/08]
Sportsmanship in international events can be transforming. It reminds us of our common humanity, transcends hatred and conflict, and shows that beneath national saber-rattling are people with shared dreams. Not so! At least not in Iran. During Olympic qualifying in Croatia, Mohammed Bidarian made it to the semifinal. One more race, and he would get an Olympic berth. When he learned he had been grouped with an Israeli swimmer, however, he refused to race. Another Iranian who did make it to the Games, Mohammad Alirezaei, mysteriously fell ill when he, too, was placed in a heat with an Israeli swimmer. Since its revolution in 1979, Iran has denied that Israel exists and forbids contact with Israeli citizens. The Olympic Charter declares that sports must be played “without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity, and fair play.” Despite promising for years to punish Iran for its policy, the IOC once again did nothing. Apparently, it’s dealing with some denial issues itself. [thestar.com, 8/14/08]
After our Olympic Ambassador Program took extraordinary precautions to ensure Team USA would conduct themselves with exemplary behavior in China, who else but the cycling team (as if that sport didn’t need another problem) arrived in Beijing wearing black masks so ugly and scary that it was a miracle they weren’t arrested for both fashion faux pas and bank robbery. Cyclist Bobby Lea said he wore the protective mask because of an illness he contracted upon arriving there for a World Cup race in December and the fear of missing out on his Olympic opportunity. “Airplanes and airports are breeding grounds for germs,” he told the Associated Press. “As an athlete in peak physical form, our immune systems are actually lower than normal. So naturally it’s a worry coming back to the same place.” Another cyclist, Kristin Armstrong, questioned whether wearing the apparatus coming off the plane was the best gesture, however. [foxnews.com, 8/6/08; sports.yahoo.com, 8/8/08]
“This is surreal. What a drama. I couldn’t have written a greater thriller.” Those words from Danish sailor Martin Kirketerp Ibsen capped one of the most exciting events of the Beijing Olympics – or any Olympiad. It all started on the final day of the 49er skiff class competition when the winds in Qingdao, which had failed in previous days, roared in with a vengeance. Needing to finish only seventh in the 10-boat competition to win the gold, Ibsen and his partner Jonas Warrer were warming up before the start when their mast snapped in two. After limping back to port, the Danish pair rushed down the dock to see if they could borrow another boat. Croatia’s team, who had not made the final and was watching the drama unfold on TV at that moment, hurried outside and offered their boat, even helping them rig it, joking that “half the gold medal will be ours.” But the race had already started, and only a few minutes remained for the Danes to get to the starting line or they would be disqualified. They raced out of the port and crossed the starting line with only four seconds to spare. Well behind the fleet, and with the wind and the roiling Yellow Sea tossing their craft about like a kite, their chances looked bleak. One hundred yards from the finish line, they capsized. Standing on their keel, they managed to right it and continued. They finished seventh place and won the gold. Or did they? Three protests were filed, one by Spain, the reigning world champion and defending gold medalist. Was Croatia’s loan of its boat an act of sportsmanship or a cheating tactic by Denmark? After 18 hours of deliberation, the protests were overruled and Denmark was awarded the gold. [sports.yahoo.com, 8/18/08; www.canada.com, 8/19/08]
Reason 1: When reporters asked IOC President Jacques Rogge what his most memorable moment was, he said, “It definitely would be the embrace and hug of Georgian and Russian athletes on the podium two days after there had been violent clashes in Georgia.”
Natalia Paderina of Russia and Nino Salukvadze of Georgia had won silver and bronze medals respectively in an, ironically enough, sharpshooting competition. At the podium, they hugged, kissed, and waved their flower bouquets. “If the world were to draw lessons, there would never be any wars,” Salukvadze said of the embrace afterward. Reason 2: In a similar gesture, after an Israeli reporter asked Iranian basketball captain Mohammed Nikkhah about the tensions between Iran and Israel on and off the field, the athlete responded, “We are coming here for playing sport. Nothing else.”
Then he proved his point by embracing Russia’s coach David Blatt, who holds dual Israeli and American citizenship. [English.aljazeera.net, 8/8/08; israellycool.com, 8/10/08]
When Swedish swimmer Therese Alshammar tore her swimsuit in the ready room moments before the swimmers were to take the blocks for the semifinal of the women’s 50-meter freestyle, 41-year-old American swimmer Dara Torres tried to help her do it up, but it ripped again. Torres hurried out of the holding area and told the meet referee about the situation. Then she went over to the other competitors and told them there would be a delay. When one complained, she told her to “chill out.” TV commentators were aghast. What was happening? No swimmer ever talks to other swimmers moments before a race. Was Torres purposely trying to rattle them? Blogger Julie Smith’s take on the incident at smithdanceparty.blogspot.com got it right: “Turns out Dara was telling the judge and the other swimmers that they were all going to wait for the Swede. It wasn’t sportsmanship. It was motherhood. Dara Torres is a mother. That means she takes care of people. Especially younger people. No other swimmer would have [done that]. But mothers don’t care. Mothers make things happen.” [Associated Press, 8/15/08; smithdanceparty.blogspot.com, 8/16/08; sports.yahoo.com, 8/16/08]
Inventor Charles Kettering once said, “Learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.” His words apply to no one better than American rifle shooter Matthew Emmons, whose hard-luck but gracious story continued in Beijing. Emmons is known for his doomed final shot at the Athens Games when he fired at the wrong target and plummeted from first to eighth. But things ended happily. Drowning his sorrow at a beer garden afterward, he met his future wife, Katerina Kurkova. In Beijing, practically the same thing happened again. Leading the competition up to his final shot, Emmons missed the target completely, losing the gold medal to Qiu Jian of China. Instead of showing anger or frustration, he congratulated the Chinese shooter. His gracious gesture caused many Chinese in the crowd to weep and some to feel that China’s gold was undeserved. His good humor and dignity impressed his hosts even more when he addressed the media later. “Things happen for a reason,” he said. “I said that the last time this happened. The last time the reason was Katie. This time, I don’t know what the reason is yet, but I’m sure something good’s gonna come from it.”
Emmons is consoled by his wife after losing the gold. In an article for Shanghai Daily, Wu Jiayin wrote, “To a sportsman, medals are important. But they should not be the only goal. What matters more is whether the player has sportsmanship, which expresses an aspiration or ethos that the activity will be enjoyed for its own sake with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one’s competitors. In this sense, Emmons was the winner of the gold medal for his real sportsmanship.” [shangheidaily.com, 8/21/08; news.xinhuanet.com, 8/21/08]
Number 1: U.S. sprinter Allyson Felix, reigning world champion and favorite to win the 200-meter dash, finished second to Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown for the second Olympics in a row. Afterward, she expressed herself this way: “I’m disappointed, but I refuse to be ungrateful for something so few people have.” Number 2: U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson, reigning world champion and two-time national champion, finished the Olympics with one gold and three silvers although many experts had predicted her medal trove would be the other way around. Johnson saw it differently: “I would never trade one of my silvers for gold. What I went through to get them is very special to me and really touched my heart.” Number 3: After Colombian women’s wrestler Jackeline Renteria won the bronze medal, she announced she was dedicating it to a fallen comrade. Growing up in the slums of Cali without professional training, her achievement was remarkable. Even more was her desire that her award would inspire children from backgrounds as bleak as hers to do their best and realize that anything was possible. [Investor’s Business Daily; Los Angeles Times; ESPN] The U.S. beach volleyball team of Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers won the gold medal, but their path to victory was driven as much by character as skill. In the decisive second set of their quarterfinal match with Germany, the score was tied 8-8 when the German pair claimed Dalhausser had reached over the net to steal a pass. The referee dismissed their complaint. When the Germans argued, the official gave them a red card (an automatic point to their opponents), which made the score 9-8 in favor of the Americans. Surprising everyone, the U.S. pair appealed to the referee to take back the red card (and the point for them), saying his decision had been made too quickly. The official denied their request as well. The Americans barely won 25-23 and advanced to the semifinals. [news-journalonline.com, 8/21/08]
Sitting in the back of the stands during the women’s sabre matches, Sunil Sabharwal of the International Fair Play Committee observed the contest. “Fencing has a tradition of grace,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “It calls for fair play and honesty all the time.” The Fair Play Committee, an affiliate of the IOC, catalogues athletes who demonstrate goodwill and unselfishness during competition. Sabharwal was fortunate. What he witnessed in the next few minutes enabled him to document one such case. Xue went on to lose to the Russian and failed to advance in the individual competition, although she later earned a silver medal in the team competition. “It’s goodwill,” Sabharwal said of the incident. “These moments of fair play, they seem like small, common things, but they aren’t small and they aren’t common.” [The Wall Street Journal, 8/15/08] |
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