I posted a few random video highlight observations on the Olympics while they were underway, but didn't have any overall theme or plans to present a complete picture of the festivities. I still don't, but
a comment by Attila reminded me that I'd meant to post a last couple of tidbits on the games.
Since he brought it up, yes the
gold medal men's basketball game was awesome. It featured the US vs. Spain, and it was a rematch, though not an especially anticipated one, after the US had destroyed Spain in the qualifying round, 119-82. Spain was a different team in the finals though, and they played their hearts out and kept it close the whole way. I was cheering both teams as they traded baskets down the stretch, with one Spaniard nailing several clutch 3s and their guard dropping in several incredible running teardrops in the paint.
Kobe saved the US at the end, assisting on or scoring like 6 straight baskets late in the 4th quarter, and while the game ended with a whimper (a Spanish player lost his cool as their comeback faltered and got a double technical giving the US 4 free throws, a 12 point lead, and the ball with about a minute left), it was a very fun game. Somewhat less fun thanks to the awful US announcers, who seemed entirely indifferent to the great game they were watching, as they audibly sweated and worried constantly about what a huge disappointment it would be if the US didn't win.
Less exciting; womens' basketball, where the
US beat Australia in the gold medal game, 92-65. I didn't watch it, and I'm not going to do so now. That game wasn't a fluke; the US women were hugely dominant
all through the tournament, winning every game by 40+, save for the semi-finals when Russia played slowdown and only lost by 15 in a low scoring affair. No one's talking about removing women's basketball from the Olympics though, since while the US has won 4 straight gold medals, most by dominating performances, there's a lively battle for silver and bronze, a lot of international players in the US professional WNBA league, etc.
Unlike women's softball, which as I blogged about previously, is an entirely US affair. The rest of the world plays for second place, the US has about 75% of all the female softball players on earth, and it's pointless to even have the tournament, which is why they're removing softball from the Olympics next time. The US won every game in 2004 and outscored their opponents by a combined total of 51-1, and this year it was more of the same. The scores for the US in their first 8 games, right up to the gold medal coronation, which was going to be bittersweet since this was the last Olympics for the sport: 11-0, 3-0, 7-0, 8-1, 7-0, 8-0, 9-0, and 4-1. And then came the anticlimax of the gold medal game, with Japan providing the sacrificial lamb... and winning 3-1. Now
that is bitterbitter. For the US women, anyway. Perhaps they were distracted by their own success, perhaps they took things for granted with their 57-2 run differential, and perhaps Japan got lucky and wouldn't win again if they played 20 more times. (The US has already beaten them 7-0 and 4-1 in these games in the qualifying rounds.) The fact remains that they put the gold around their neck, and the US women, already brokenhearted by their sport being DQed from future Olympics, got kicked wen they were down and had to settle for silver medals.
Ironically, this might be the game that saves the sport, since it demonstrates that there's not total dominance. (Just near-total. After all, US team finished the tournament with a 58-5 run differential.) It also demonstrates the lameness of deciding a champion in a sport like baseball with a 1-game series. There's a reason the baseball championships in every major league around the world are best of 5 or 7; one game can too easily be swung by a fluke, or one great pitching performance, etc.)
Apparently Baseball is out of the Olympics after this year too, even though it's quite competitive. It's just as well; all the best players in the world are in the US MLB, which plays all summer and doesn't take any notice of the Olympics. Neither do the Japanese leagues, which leaves the national teams for the Olympics to be made up of a bunch of college kids and minor leaguers. Well, for everyone but Cuba, which is the one country in baseball-mad Latin America that doesn't have all of their best players in the pros. Their best players compete in the Olympics, so they generally win. They actually settled for Silver this year; South Korea beat them in the finals, while the US and Japan played for Bronze.
I can't sit through a regular baseball game, but I'd actually watch if there were a real international world championship. Every Latin American country has a lot of great pros, and though the US and Japan would be the favorites, it would be a very competitive event. But with all the best pros in Japan and the US, playing for salaries instead of national pride... who cares?
One of the wackier Olympic moments came when a
Cuban TKD fighter kicked the ref after he was DQed for taking too long with an injury delay. It's a stupid rule; the guy banged his toe into the other
fighter kicker's shin, and he was sitting on the floor getting it sprayed and taped by two trainers when the sixty second time limit ran out, and the ref called the fight. He was (understandably) pissed off.
Kicking the ref is outrageous and the guy was banned for life from international competition, but seriously, what kind of injury rule is that? Either have some provision for injury time outs, or don't have injury stoppage at all and let the combatants know they'll be DQed if they get hurt. What kind of medical attention can you possibly get in 60 seconds anyway? It took the medics 45 seconds to get into the ring in the first place.
The funny part is that yes, he kicked him. After all the grief Olympic TKD takes for being such a weird, foot-tag sort of non-combat, (no kicking anywhere but the padded scoring zones, no punching, no pushing, no grappling, etc) the final insult would have been for a TKD fighter to lash out in anger... with a punch. Or some other non-scoring attack.
I was reminded of a clip I saw online from one of those
insane Japanese reality/prank comedy shows. In the segment of which I speak, some Japanese TV crew was filming the world champion race walker. That absurd,
frequently-lampooned sport where they walk really fast with much hip-swiveling, but aren't allowed to run. As the joke usually goes, "What next, the 50m crawl? The hand stand 100 meters?"
Anyway, on the Japanese comedy show they had a real race walker in Japan for some event, and they took him around the city all day and filmed him at various locations, and eventually took him to a track to demonstrate his sport. The joke was that all day they'd been showing him fake reports about some crazed maniacs who were dressing up like samurai and attacking people, especially foreigners. So he's scooting along the track, and just as he finishes one lap there's a bunch of screaming and the samurais burst out of the locker room, appear to slash the TV crew to death with their swords, and then spy the race walker. They rush at him, screaming bloody murder, swords overhead, and... of course he picks up his heels and runs for his fucking life.
It was kind of stupid in the actual clip, since duh, of course he's going to run. No one says race walking is faster than running; it's just an alternate, somewhat comical, bipedal form of locomotion. But in concept it's damn near brilliant, and thankfully for the self respect of every TKD practitioner on earth, the mad Cuban fighter didn't throw a right hook, or a spinning elbow, or a knee to the midsection when he had his one moment of actual violence.
Finally, I enjoyed looking over the
final medal standings for these Olympic games. The US won the most total, China won the most golds, Russia was a strong third, and then Britain, Germany, Australia, and France were tightly-bunched at 4-7th. (Incidentally, it's not an official tally, but just out of curiosity I'd be interested to know how the
total medals awarded stacked up. I mean total; there were 12 guys on each basketball team, for instance. Or take women's handball; Norway won the gold medal, and they only won 3 golds in the Olympics, but there are like, 15 people on a handball team. That's more golds to Norway from that one event than China got by dominating the individual events in weightlifting or diving. Of course China won the women's team gymnastics, which is another 8 or so for them there, so maybe it would just balance out.)
Skip down past the big countries with lots of medals though, and look at the odd ones.
Armenia won 6 medals, all bronzes, all to men. Three in weightlifting, 2 in wrestling, and one in boxing. I'm guessing there's a fairly macho, gladiatorial tradition in that nation. Better yet, all six guys have at least 4 syllables in their last names, all have at least one "Y" in their last name, and they had two different bronze medal winners named "T. MARTIROSYAN." It's not the same guy in two different events, either. They're both weightlifters, but they're in very different weight classes. Brothers?
India's another odd one, and quite a contrast. India is the second most populous nation on earth, but while China won 100 medals and 51 golds,
India won 3. A gold in shooting and bronzes in boxing and wrestling. That works out to one medal per 300,000,000 Indians, I think? Obviously there are very different national priorities between China and India, and equally-obvious is the athletic dividends that can be reaped by a massive, well-financed, nation-wide training program. (Insert snide remarks about three year olds being taken from their parents and stuck into 12 hour a day training facilities, and scientific breakthroughs in undetectible performance-enhancing chemistry, if you must.)
Cameroon won 1 medal, a gold in women's triple jump. I like
the winner's bio. "Coach: Herself." So is she like the hero of the country? Or are the Olympics entirely off their radar? And don't you picture her out practicing with a herd of gazelles, leaping into a pit she dug herself, while wearing tires for shoes? (Yes, I'm sure
Cameroon has some lovely modern cities, etc. It's a joke.)
Carrying on that cultural imperialist theme of humor,
Togo won a single medal, a bronze in Canoe/Kayak. And yes, I'm sure he practices in a boat he carved from a coconut tree, with some chickens and pigs riding shotgun for ballast.
Finally, it sounds like a joke but it's a reality; they're having problems in Korea since they have
so few surnames. They long banned marriage between pepole with the same surname, and people are encouraged to invent new names when they marry, but family names and connections are culturally of great significance, so it's not been widely adopted. Check out
their medal winners, and you'll see ample evidence. I count 11 Lee's, 8 Park's, 11 Kim's, and lots of other names that 4 or 5 people have, and that's out of their 71 winners. There are 4 Kim's and 6 Lee's just on their baseball team! Plus almost all the names are vey short, 3-5 letters. Odd the side effects long term non-immigration can have in some countries.
Labels: olympics
