Right Pulse

Interesting article from The Guardian. Probably the first and likely the last time I link to that newspaper, although this article does highlight the sterile nature of national sporting rivalry:

Patriotism is undeniably part of the Olympics, and I’d never want it to be otherwise. But the nation for which the athlete is competing should never overwhelm the individual. There is a point at which sporting nationalism becomes odious, a point never better captured than by John Stockton when he was in Barcelona with the USA’s basketball ‘dream team’. Asked why the team were staying outside of the athlete’s village, Stockton famously replied: “The Olympic spirit is about beating people, not about living with them.”

The spirit, of course, is about both those things. The majority of United States athletes, indeed all athletes, tend to rebuff the media’s invitations to indulge in international slanging matches. Australia’s Rob Bell, who won bronze in the C1 slalom behind Britain’s David Florence, knocked back a question about what this meant for the rivalry between the two countries by saying simply “What rivalry?” Five minutes later, vaguely repelled by the press pack’s attempts to stir things up, he whispered to his two fellow medallists, “Let’s get the hell out of here”.

Spot the diplomat. I get the feeling, now the British are winning Olympic medals, that this British attitude might change over time. I think the author may have alluded to this very possibility:

In part, the top nations’ obsession with their position in the table can be justified as a means of processing the sheer number of medals they win. But the necessary emphasis on quantity seems to rob the Games of much of what makes them so enjoyable. Britain, like most other countries, has never had to deal with the prospect of winning 20 or more golds, and so it has the luxury of making individual heroes of the winners it does have.

Ah yes only a few countries lack the luxuries that losing affords.

From the London Times on the Olympics. First the empty seats:

The mystery of the half-filled stands at many events at the 2008 Olympic Games has been solved, according to Chinese internet users, who say it is the result of a policy to prevent the gathering of large and possibly uncontrollable crowds.

Then the rent-a-crowds. Anyone who watched the triathlon would have seen them in their droves waving Chinese flags. Do Chinese leaders really think the world is so gullable?

Lower-ranking Chinese officials hastily bused in paid “volunteers” to populate the stands in Beijing, appreciating the embarrassment caused by leaving them half-empty, but public relations remain a matter of indifference to most guardians of public order.

Then there is the cost - over $40 billion spent on the Olympics, for a country where half the people do not have access to clean drinking water.

For all its export might, China is still a poor, largely agrarian country with perhaps 700m farmers and 150m migrant workers. The size of its economy is huge but, measured by wealth per head, it ranks 109th in the world, comparable with Swaziland or Morocco.

It appears the whole Chinese Olympic propaganda message is coming undone, not that NBC or Channel 7 are going to mention the problems of course.

Why is baseball in the Olympics? From the China vs. Canada game:

On a day when it was revealed that the IOC was encouraging the Beijing organizing committee to start filling their empty venues with factory workers or whatever, it looked like a rent-a-crowd had been rounded up to sit in the seats down the lines and in the outfield to see China’s first go at a baseball game.

There was no atmosphere whatsoever as the crowd mostly just sat out there not knowing what the heck they were watching. Meanwhile, behind the plate, the seats were all reserved for IOC members and VIPs, etc. and nobody showed up to fill any of them.

The Chinese solution to the lack of spectators at the Olympic events is really the main problem, a bit of home style Chinese cook’in of the Olympics:

Tuesday, Wang Wei, the BOCOG secretary general, reiterated the claim but stumbled somewhat when it came to explaining why there were still yawning gaps in the stands.

“I think due to the weather conditions, as well the hot and humid weather and the rains. As for the previous Olympic Games, the first couple of days, there were not many spectators that show up,” he said.

Wang then declared: “As from today, we will get more spectators into the stadium.”

It seemed a reckless claim until he explained that if organizers find “there are too many empty seats, they will organize some cheerleaders who are volunteers (to sit in them). But if people will come over for these empty seats, then they will stand up and go and let the ticket holders have their seats.”

With the number of volunteers around the various Olympic venues, Wang undoubtedly can put an end to the empty seat phenomena, but the problem is the optics.

All the volunteer cheerleaders wear yellow shirts and they easily will be spotted for the “rent-a-crowd” they are.

The rice is steaming!

You may be aware of the faked computer generated fireworks used by the Chinese to fool the world, as part of the Olympic opening ceremony, and how:

….the Chinese and Olympic flags blew dramatically in a breeze that did not exist anywhere else in the suffocating National Stadium.

Turns out, they were powered by special devices in the flagpoles.

And besides the media, communication and protest censorship, there was this:

Television coverage of the opening ceremony revealed that thousands of the spectators in the stands were in fact police and soldiers, while official cheerleaders stood in the aisles choreographing the applause.

The same could be said of the crowds at the Olympic venues, where family members and the international public have been severely restricted in favour of Chinese rent-a-crowds and members of the Chinese Communist Party, the IOC and other ‘big wigs’:

TV vision also showed the bored CHINESE crowds in the stand at the finish line apparently dozing off even when the cyclists were going past. On a light note there was a large screen near the finish line which flashed “CHEER & CLAP” when the cyclists went past, didn’t seem to work.

 How contrived can you get? Well now get ready for a bit of lip -synching:

A 7-year-old Chinese girl was not good-looking enough for the Olympics opening ceremony, so another little girl with a pixie smile lip-synched “Ode to the Motherland,” a ceremony official said.

A member of China’s ruling Politburo asked for the last-minute change to match one girl’s face with another’s voice, the ceremony’s chief music director, Chen Qigang, said in an interview with Beijing Radio.

“The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest,” Chen said in a video of the interview posted online Sunday night.

I also couldn’t help notice that the children dressed in traditional costumes for the opening ceremony, to represent the diversity of China, all looked Han Chinese. Maybe I am being a bit picky, but I don’t think so. Seems that Chinese home cooking is also extending to the sporting events:

AUSTRALIAN shooter Russell Mark says two Chinese judges awarded hits to a Chinese shooter after he had clearly missed targets in the final of the men’s double trap.

The shooter, Hu Binyan Hu,  went on to win a bronze medal.

Mark - who finished fifth - said he believed the two Chinese referees were pressured by the home crowd and that he and fellow shooters were stunned by the decisions.

Hu Binyuan appeared to miss at least one - possibly three - of the clay targets but was awarded full points before a bemused crowd at the Beijing Shooting Range.

And of course the now famous child, ah…I mean regulation age gymnasts:

They say she is 16, but even when she pulls herself up to her full height at the start of a routine you have to suspend all common sense to believe it.

At 4ft 6in and weighing just four-and-a-half stones, the gymnast seems more like a child yet to be weaned off cartoons than a fully-fledged teenager.

But little Deng Linlin holds a passport that says she was born on April 21, 1992, and is 16 years old, which entitles her to compete as an Olympic gymnast. She looks more like 13 to me. Some of her team-mates appear even younger….

The Chengdu Sports Bureau in Sichuan listed He Kexin, the uneven bars specialist, as being born on January 1, 1994. That would make her 14 - two years under the competition limit.

In November 2007, a Chinese official introduced He Kexin as a 13-year-old, while the New York Times reported that both He Kexin and her team-mate Jiang Yuyuan (who is only 4ft 7in and five stones) may still be 14. A list of competitors’ birth dates from the Zhejiang Province sports administration said she was not yet 15.

The China Daily, the official English language mouthpiece of the government, stated He Kexin was 14 on their website. The state-run CCTV network recorded team-mate Yang Yilan as 14 while the General Administration of Sport of China had her down as 15. Many of these references are now blocked.

Not many sports can claim this type of intelligence from their best players:

THE top second-rower in international rugby Dan Vickerman is poised to walk away from the game he loves next year to undertake an economics degree at Cambridge University.

Dan Vickerman will be a big loss to the Wallabies and the Waratahs, but good luck to him on leaving rugby at the height of his rugby career to seek more long-term goals. Rugby players have always been an interesting bunch, because they have life aspirations outside of rugby. By contrast, from the AFL:

Hall was stood down indefinitely by the Swans after taking a wild swing at Collingwood’s Shane Wakelin on Saturday night. He also gave away several undisciplined free kicks, with the Swans confirming Hall was battling “personal issues”.

Earlier this season, Barry Hall received a seven-week suspension for punching West Coast opponent Brent Staker.

Hall’s latest brain snap earned him a one-match ban from the AFL match review panel, but Sydney’s decision to stand him down was unprecedented.

Apparently Hall has been checked into a psychologist.