PhotoDude.com

Thu. Aug 26, 2004

Color of the Games

Over the past week I’ve collected this small sampling of columns about the “color” of the Games, some of the tone, scenes, and smaller stories you don’t see on TV.

I’ve written before of the relative boorishness of Americans abroad, which has been a sadly frequent experience whenever I’ve traveled [...] Interesting, then, that I’ve had such a different experience here. In fact, almost every American I’ve met has been lovely. Whether it was Jessie, the triathlete I met at the Temple of Zeus, or Richard, the baseball fanatic who helped me find Heinrich Schliemann’s grave (long story for another time), or a dozen others … I’ve been pleased as hell with these people. Proud to share a flag with them, honest to God.

So last night, during one of the 100-meter dash semi-finals, two Americans took the lead, then coasted the last few meters, turning and seemingly even talking to each other before the finish.

I don’t know how this played back in the States. I do know how it played in the Olympic Center.

I also now know what people from many nations will say in front of someone they presume to be a New Zealander. That little gesture of cockiness from those sprinters set off remarks from more than a few of the people around me, about more than just a race. Nothing loud. Nothing in-your-face. But you can guess the rest.

What was startling, I guess, was how matter of fact it all was. “Of course the Americans are assholes” was very much the gist.

Sigh.

Bob Harris: Aristophanes, Beach Volleyball, and a brief evening of Kiwiness

Who really thought the Athens organizers would get their act together in time for 2004, anyway?

The rest of it actually makes a whole lot more sense than pigs flying, in a world where lines are constantly blurring, where celebrity and sport and entertainment are all part of one big, noisy neon flash.

The Olympics are slowly but surely beginning to look like just another wing of McCulture. Listen to the music they were playing between innings: the Ramones, Joan Jett, Outkast, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, and the theme from Green Acres.

They play YMCA, too. The other night, a group of Taiwanese fans did that dance, then followed it by chanting and performing the tomahawk chop. (Search in vain for the cultural connection.)

But heck, they seemed to be enjoying themselves. The arena was packed for the basketball game, when so many other venues here have featured so many empty seats. Down on the beach, no one has asked for their money back.

The Globe and Mail: “New Olympic ideals bare a coarse nature”

Also, we must adopt the fabulous Greek driving law: Right-on-Anything. And the post office is open Sundays. And you can sit down for dinner at 1 a.m. anywhere in town. Great for sportswriters. Great for the makers of Pepcid AC. And no matter when you get your table in Greece, that baby is yours for as long as you want it. You could sit there and whittle if you wanted, they wouldn’t ask you to move along.

But the best thing we need to bring home is the Greeks’ Louvre-quality excuses. The Greeks are much too macho to confess, so they’ve turned excuse-making into the 38th Olympic sport. It’s fun to catch them with their togas down, just to see what beautiful and simple lie they will tell to cover it up.

There were plenty of witnesses on Day One of the doobie-shaped torch going out for a reported 20 minutes. The Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun even ran a picture of it, colder than a popsicle. Did the Greeks admit it? No, sir. “It was not out,” a spokesman with the Athens Organizing Committee said. “We were simply testing the levels.” And the level we were testing is zero.

Rick Reilly: “From cheese pies to art of excuses, America can learn a lot from Greece”

And a man born three years after the massacre at the Munich Games, Gal Fridman, became the first Israeli to win a gold medal:

Every time an Israeli team gets ready to go to an Olympics, the first stop it makes is at the memorial for the victims of the Munich massacre in Tel Aviv. Fridman will make a stop on the way back, too, with his gold medal. “Just to bring them the honor they deserve,” he said.

Before he did a live interview with Israeli TV at the edge of the Saronic Gulf, Fridman smiled and spoke about bringing people together, about one of his best friends, who is Turkish, whom he calls “my Muslim brother.” The friend calls him “my Jewish brother.”

On the night he won Israel’s first gold medal, Gal Fridman liked talking about that, about a day of joy at the water’s edge that he hoped would spread much, much farther.

“The only thing I can want is I would love to bring peace to Israel,” Gal Fridman said. “If you fight someone, fight him in sport, to prove who is better, not in different ways. This is our job as athletes – to show the other side of the Israeli people … that we want peace. All of my friends that I know want peace, because nobody likes anything else but peace.”

New York Daily News: “Israel’s golden moment”