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Sun. Aug 17, 2008

Olympics, Week One

I’d hoped to post more this past week, but the reality is that there was an overload of work, and I’ve spent many hours watching the Olympics, which has left no time to write about it.

Not that you need my input. In 1996, I may have been the only individual blogging the Olympics, but a dozen years later you can now read blogs by the athletes themselves (and peruse Olympics aggregators, too). Though I am in no way responsible for that, it does make me feel a bit like a great-great-grandfather (not something I need as I approach 50, but strangely satisfying nonetheless).

Here’s a sample athlete blog entry, from Ronda Rousey, US Judo Team:

What I don’t think people understand is that the Olympics is not about winning and losing. The World Championships is. The Olympics is about the world coming together, putting their differences aside, and channeling all their competetive impulses into sport instead of blowing each other into smithereens.

That’s why boycotting the Olympics is just plain wrong. regardless of the circumstances. No. Matter. What.

So yeah I’m here to try and win, try to win with ever fiber of my being and with the last 15 years of my life. But not just to win gold for myself, but to support the Olympic Movement.

Big Jim makes fun of me for being an idealist. And my Mom doesn’t always agree with me when I say its not all about winning. But I see nothing wrong with doing what I can to make the world a better place and taking pride in that.

Another grandfatherly reminder: many of the US athletes in these Olympics talk about the first Olympics they ever watched and how it inspired them … and they’re talking about the Atlanta Games in 1996. Which in many way seems like yesterday to me, but clearly is long enough ago that a child can grow into a gold medalist.

The first Olympics I watched was 1968, the first broadcast “live” via satellite from Mexico City (some would argue with NBC’s 12 hour taped delay of most events, we’ve regressed since then). Then, in the summer of my 13th year, I was immersed in the 1972 Games in Munich, in all their glory and tragedy. Formative, to say the least. Others who are in my generation, like Matt Welch, had their formative Olympic moments as well.

Is it still the same today? I don’t know, I sense things are different, that it is mostly the 40 and over crowd who are into the Olympics. But I certainly hope there’s a generation of kids watching who are inspired to try something greater than they might have imagined before they watched these Olympics.

For the vast majority of us who are unable to travel to the other side of the world, we’ve been treated to the first Olympics broadcast in high definition, using a variety of innovations, like the DiveCam: “Thousands of cameras are catching the action in China — every one of them high-definition. Yet for a feat of engineering magic that dazzles as it baffles, nothing beats the DiveCam.”

Being a visual kind of guy, watching the Olympics in high def has been a visual feast. Of course, I’ve been able to see every tiny drop of water as it falls from another gold medal wrapped around the neck of Michael Phelps. And I have to say, while his athletic accomplishment of winning 8 golds (and breaking a few world records along the way) is quite enough in itself, to me it is amplified when you consider his logistical accomplishments in the past eight days. The man had a 16-18 hour schedule every day, with no margin for error, going from Olympic village to events to post-event drug testing to interviews and back to another event. Plus, eating 10,000 to 12,000 calories per day, just to make up for what he was burning off in the pool.

That schedule (and diet) alone is enough to kill a man. Well, a man like me, clearly not a man like Michael Phelps.

I was also able to watch the world’s fastest human in as sharp a view as a camera could capture of such a speeding mass of protoplasm, Usain Bolt of Jamaica; Bolt’s performance freezes time: “Records fall, and then they fall again. But never in recent history has a 100-meter record fallen like it fell on Saturday night in China.”

The man won by two tenths of a second, which is a huge gap in a 100 meter race. There was a mere six one-thousandths of a second separating second through fifth place. Bolt beat all of them by two-hundred one-thousandths of a second.

He set a world record, 9.69 seconds. And he was coasting the last 15 meters, arms spread wide, looking side to side. It was the most amazing physical performance, and the shortest, I’ve seen in these Games. And this was only his 8th time (there’s that number again) running the 100. Mr. Bolt will be around in 2012, no doubt, and maybe will be under 9.5 by then. If he stops coasting.

And it’s not always about the gold. I admit, I’m always more moved by the track and field events than any other part of the Olympics, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve been moved to tears a few times already in the opening three days. I watched Shalane Flanagan the other day in the 10,000 meters, and her joy at the bronze medal brought a tear to my eye.

As she crossed the finish line, she held up three fingers with a quizzical look to see if it was real. It was, and she became the first American to win a medal in the event since Lynn Jennings in 1992.

“Oh, my God,” she said, “Am I three? Am I third?”

Marblehead’s Flanagan thrilled with third place finish

You see, Michael Phelps is a rare bird. For most of the thousands of athletes competing in these Games, coming out as the third best person in the world at whatever it is they do … is a joyous outcome. Heck, if you watched the women’s marathon yesterday, you could see joy from some of those who were simply happy to be able to say they finished, no matter what their placing in the pack.

And it’s not always the “wins” or even the finals that bring tears to my eyes. They came as I watched Nicole Teter in an 800 trial.

Nicole Teter pulled off the track less than 100 meters into the race. But she’d known her Olympic experience was over with her first step Friday morning, when a painful lower leg injury flared up.

“I thought I could finish the race, but it cinched up on my first stride,” the Eugene resident said. “I could barely even get on my toes. I was limping from the start.”

And not long after, she was jogging off the track, crying.

Leg injury takes Teter out of 800; Mutola advances easily: The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.

She also suffered from a bladder infection and a stomach virus for the 3 days before the event, and had not been able to keep down food. I’m amazed she was able to even get on the track. And at 34, these were her last Olympics. When I see that happen to someone, it just goes straight to my heart. I feel a tiny bit of what they are feeling.

Perhaps that’s part of what I enjoy the Olympics so much. I feel a visceral and empathic connection with what I see, whether it is amazing accomplishment previously unseen, or the dedication of an athlete simply finishing and being proud that they did their best in their chance to compete against the best the world has to offer … and even the cliched “agony of defeat.”

It’s a vast panorama of human accomplishment, and dedication to a goal. Even the failures tell a story of humanity. For me, it just doesn’t get any better.

Finally, it was revealed that the 56 children who brought in the flag during the Opening ceremonies were not what Bob Costas told us they were: New fakery scandal, as China’s ‘ethnic’ children actually come from Han majority; “There were no Uighurs, no Zhuangs, no Huis, no Tujias, no Mongols and definitely no Tibetans. Indeed, in the latest in a series of manipulations that have soured memories of the spectacular opening ceremony, all 56 were revealed to be Han Chinese…”

This is on top of the “revelations” that the “fireworks footsteps” were actually computer animations, and the child who sang didn’t really sing, she just looked prettier than the one who did.

So, it would appear that the Opening Ceremonies were an event staged for maximum visual impact and entertainment, not for historical accuracy. Shocking!

I can see how, in the country that brought the world “Mission Accomplished,” Milli Vanilli, the TV show Survivor, and a multi-billion dollar industry called “plastic surgery,” these visual lies are extremely shocking to our virginal senses.

Perhaps watching a little of another American Institution will make you feel better: “Professional wrestling.”