Earn Those Medals, Win That Respect
I remember being a little kid and opening up the newspaper during the Olympics to make sure that the US was always ahead in the medal count during the Olympics. Not the Winter Olympics, mind you. Although I strongly believe the US should merge with Canada to improve that situation as well. And to strengthen our currency. Anyway, the reason that the medal counts were so important, of course, was because of the Cold War. Winning in the Olympics meant that capitalism was the best political-economic system.
It never seemed particularly fair that the Soviet Union got to count all of its semi-independent countries. But then again there are probably some Texans on the US teams, so maybe it wasn’t that big a deal. The point is that the Olympics were a time for countries to come together and demonstrate that, while the Soviets weren’t actually going to war against the US, it was still a good idea not to attack America because it had really good triple jumpers. You know, just in case the US-Soviet war came down to Carl Lewis hurdling a moat.
As you can see, the over-emphasis on medaling during the Olympics has always been, and continues to be, really absurd. I’d like to think that Chinese do this more than the Americans, but I suspect it’s just that more of them emphasize the value of Olympic success than do people in the US. It’s not intensity, it’s quantity. That is the only conclusion I can draw from yesterday’s NY Times article about how the Chinese are obsessing about winning the most gold medals in any sport, no matter what it might be. Even rowing. Or as Peter Hessler pointed out in the New Yorker a while back, boxing. Why? Because both sports have tons of medals (sorry, New Yorker archive is not accessible).
But don’t fear. Americans are just as nuts about the competitions as their Chinese soon-to-be hosts:
Roush [chief of sport performance for the committee] still worries. He visited Chinese sports schools, where children take their first steps to becoming gold medalists. He has seen China’s resolve.
The U.S.O.C. also focuses on sports with many medal opportunities, but Roush is aware that China’s teams will be powerful in Beijing.
“It’s frightening to think about what they might do,” he said.
They might win a bunch of medals. Which would lead to endless soul searching for the Americans. Well, the rowers anyway. I suspect the basketball players will get over it quickly. As they take a caviar bath in their gold hot tubs.
People in rowing agree about the increasingly dangerous and threatening nature of the Chinese team:
Tom Terhaar, the American women’s coach, said: “They are like robots with all the resources they could ever ask for. Does that scare me? Sure it does.”
You hear that? These rich robots are a menace. Except…is that really our biggest source of national pride? I mean, I’d be pretty happy if the US won the most medals, but…do we even know who has won the most medals in recent Olympics? Well the US came out ahead in 1996, 2000 and 2004 for the Summer Games. But what about Barcelona? Who the hell knows, or cares? Most of these medals are won in sports that people tend not to care about like speed walking and shot put. Quick, what’s the difference between a light flyweight and a featherweight. Or a flyweight and a lightweight. Hell, name a fighter in any of these categories. For all of the glamor of soccer and basketball, most of the medals are won in sports no one knows anything about. Like rowing.
Which is fine. Half the fun of the Games is watching sports like ski jumping. But the only ski jumping I can name is Eddie the Eagle who was famous for having a cool nickname and being really, really bad.
Again, I like the Olympics as much as anyone. Or at least as much as someone who likes the Olympics okay. But all the masculine East Germans in the world didn’t make the country a superpower. Or win the respect of the world. Remember the tragedy of the US losing the 1988 basketball gold medal to the Soviet Union? Well by the time the ‘92 Games rolled around, the country didn’t even exist anymore. Apparently they were better at basketball than economics.
Just something to think about as the Chinese pour around a billion dollars into their training program and the US puts in about 150 million. It’s all just an expensive spectacle in the end. And if you’re worried America could be spending that money better, don’t worry, it would only fund 37 seconds of war.
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Falen responds:
Posted: June 3rd, 2008 at 4:02 am →
You know, it is funny reading the article about how you were excited and inspired as a child by the great athletic performance during the past Olympics. Two paragraphs later, I see a cynical adult whining about money “better-spent elsewhere”, uselessness of certain sports, how everything is stupid etc etc etc…
Perhaps you are simply forgetting the whole inspirational side to the Olympics and turning into a cynical old man? Whatever happened to the dreams?
China can certainly spent money elsewhere, and be like India…
Yokie Kuma responds:
Posted: June 3rd, 2008 at 1:21 pm →
The Chinese government is quite smart. Harnessing the national pride of the people has shown in the past to bring about great success. It takes the collective mind off of day-to-day issues and lets them turn a blind eye toward true problems. It has been done frequently in the history of China …. keep the microscope turned outward vs inward …. give a focus where you want it vs where you don’t …. and the people know this and accept it.
Ooops. I forgot where I was going with my comment …..
nanheyangrouchuan responds:
Posted: June 5th, 2008 at 10:20 am →
It’s not the clear, indisputable victories that will be a problem. It will be victories decided by questionable referee decisions, odd disqualifications and sicknesses of top foreign athletes or even potential fan interference that may help China’s medal count.
And if China does beat the US in medal count, woe to every American in China, we’ll never, ever hear the end of it.