Tag: Olympics

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Olympic Snoozefest

I find the Olympics boring. I would like to see an Olympics where every country sends a random group of 200 people. When they arrive, their first task is to sort out who competes in what. Then they have to learn how to do it. It would be way more fun to watch than this boring endless cycle of identical people .02 of a second faster or slower thanking their moms and dads and coaches and whoever and springing for the nearest exit to sign the most lucrative endorsement deal they can.

Besides, most of them are probably cheating.

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Sports Oppression

The essential dynamic of most national sports teams is this: there is an administrative infrastructure of privileged coaches and managers and administrators who have the power to decide who plays and who doesn’t and why and when, and then there is the talent who actually achieves (or not) the desired results and provides the real “value” of sport: the entertainment of watching a competition.

When Canada decided to play Christine Sinclair and America decided to play Megan Rapinoe at the 2023 World Cup, it was the administrative side in action, deciding that certain players were “owed” the right to take the field in critical games even if their talents have largely faded and there were better players on the bench.  Look at the best players on the winning teams:  they are invariably young.

When Spanish players protested the ridiculous regimen coach Jorge Vilda imposed on the team during training (checking their rooms at night to see if they were there, searching bags for purchases, taking the bus instead of a plane to matches), management refused to hear them and demanded that they apologize before they could be considered for the national team.  Think about it: we do not play, we do not have the skills, we do not train, we do not diet, we do not sweat, but how dare you question our decisions of what you must do.  It’s obscene.  Bend your knee.

And then there was the kiss.   I note that most news outlets conspicuously did not broadcast the video of the horrible, shocking, terrible, disgusting, misogynistic, patriarchal buss.  I think it’s obvious why.  It was incredibly brief, and we see Jenni Hermosa embrace Rubiales as part of the transaction.  That doesn’t alter the fact that it was inappropriate and unwanted, but the context makes it less clear that this was some kind of monstrous gesture that must be punished with dismissal.

The Inevitable Double Standard!

I am not exaggerating.  But I have to stop a minute and insist here loudly that there is a monumental effect going on in which everyone must be swept up into and compelled to join the stampede and denounce the incident as a terrible act of sexual aggression.  It is not that.  It is trivial.  It is incredibly transient.  It is a stray impulse, a clumsy gesture.  It does not deserve the attention it is getting and I refuse to kowtow to the hoards on it.  And I am getting more and more disgusted by the movement behind it by the minute.

Many are calling it a “sexual assault”.  Oh, that’s smart: the next time someone hears the term “sexual assault” they will think it might refer to a kiss that lasted less than a second.   Or it could be rape.  Or forced sodomy.  Who knows?  It’s all sexual assault.

And now, it has ridiculously, absurdly, comically made the FRONT PAGE of the NEW YORK TIMES.  Yes, it has.  A fucking kiss that lasted less than one second.

Jenni Hermosa has released a statement.  I cannot confirm it but I would be willing to bet a pocketful of change that it was written by a feminist probably connected with the player’s union, and not by Hermosa.

A video has surfaced of the women’s team on the bus after the game making light of the incident, joking about it, shouting “kiss, kiss” when another man enters the bus, and looking at video of a female journalist kissing a member of the Spanish men’s team after a victory a few years ago.

There was a time when some anti-communists cited concerns about Santa Claus being a pernicious red influence on our children.  They should have stuck to Stalin.  The Santa Claus reference is remembered for ever as an exemplar of an overwrought movement that lost it’s mind getting hysterical about imagined insidious elements everywhere.  The feminists should learn from them and stick to real sexual violence.

It has become about something else.  It has become something Megan Rapinoe can seize upon as evidence of how horrible her life is because she is bullied and oppressed by the patriarchy even though by any objective standard Rapinoe lives an incredibly privileged life and even gets invited to play in a critical game when she is well past her prime (check out her performances at the 2023 World Cup: she was distinctly terrible– she couldn’t even lift corners into the box.)  To witness Rapinoe trying to leverage this incident into just how much she personally has suffered is more than obscene.

The kiss has become the Trump of the World Cup: sucking all the oxygen out of the room when it should be better spent on describing how remarkably exciting and beautiful the games were: the final games of the tournament were simply outstanding: thrilling passing, great shots, passionate defense, and compelling narratives.  You idiots– yes, I mean it– are obsessing over a trivial incident that is robbing the tournament of distinctive achievements.  You make this trivial gesture a monumental issue and then complain that it is Rubiales who distracted everyone from your glorious championship.

If the argument is that the entire regimen, the control and power exercised by the administrative parasites who plague all major sports should be deposed, the Royal Spanish Football Federation, I am enthusiastically on side.  Let’s dismantle it.  Fuck the coaches and managers: give the power to the players.  Let them elect the coaches and managers, or dismiss them, as is their wont; let’s please, please, please dump the vast array of parasitical support staff that accompany athletes to tournaments, get the best seats, stay at the best hotels, take away their medals if they smoked marijuana, and are never really kissed by anybody.

National Review’s writer Charles C. W. Cooke claimed that the women’s game is substandard.  As he recently put it, “It’s not good sports.” The final had exactly what he accused the women’s game of lacking: a fascinating clash of tactics played with speed and mesmeric flow, tense and fierce.  Atlantic

I hope activists fuck off with their hysteria about a kiss and take on the real enemy, the structure of international sports organizations, the fascistic culture of FIFA and the International Olympics Committee, the parasitical coaches who are as often as not women, and the flag-waving rabble of rabid nationalists who only care about a sport if their team wins the medals.

But they won’t.  Rubiales will resign and most of the world will breathe a sign of relief and act as if the crisis is over and the real powers of Spanish Football will remain untouched and unharmed and will all be sitting in the best box seats again at the next tournament.  You fools.  You have been gaslighted again.  And you will be again and again and again.

Incidentally, I have been unable to determine if the short video of “the kiss” that I found online is sourced from ESPN, FIFA, or what.  I don’t know if the medal ceremonies are as protected as the game itself.  Maybe it is.  Either way, one wonders how much taxpayers contribute to the costs of training, transportation, game facilities, and so on, and then, why the hell should they be denied the right to see video of the games, at least after the live broadcast?  I have not seen CBS, PBS, NBC, the New York Times, or anyone else post video of the kiss or of any part of the game.

Just how many parasites are there?

May be an image of 3 people, people playing soccer and people playing football

When the Beatles dropped by to see Elvis in the mid 1960’s, they were astonished that he had about 11 assistants living with him to take care of his every whim and need.  The Beatles at the time had 3 for all of them.

Elvis was a shallow, credulous, fat, drug-addled pop star by then.  The Beatles went on to create some of the most remarkable music of the 1960’s.

No coincidence.

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The Effete Olympics

I have not been a fan of the Olympics for many years, though I love a good sporting contest, and have to admit to being a fan of the Blue Jays.

When the Summer Olympics are in this hemisphere, they are usually in the U.S., and the jingoism of the home side is hard to take. When they are in Europe or Asia, there is tape delay, which results in this bizarre parade of edited events. Obviously, the networks believe that most people do not have the patience to actually watch a sporting event from beginning to end if it has already ended– with all the little delays and formalities and suspense– so they package everything into a facile narrative without much colour or real suspense.

Here’s the winner. Now an interview with her parents who have, with the assistance of a consultant, prepared a “narrative” to sell you about this athlete, which will then be packaged and resold by Nike and Gatorade.

NBC, by the way, cut away from the portion of the opening ceremonies that honored the victims of Britain’s own 9/11, the subway bombings, because, rightly or not, they didn’t think American audiences would care. This is either a ringing condemnation of Americans or of NBC or both. It was an emblematic decision, a defining moment of gracelessness, ignorance, and narcissism.

The CTV commentators at the rowing and gymnastics are appalling. There is not even the slightest pretense of anything other than a bellicose ranting for the home side. And all rather gay, to be truthful. They all talk like nagging, proud, invested parents, always referring to the athletes by their first names, and offering unsolicited advice about how to compete– as if, after training for fifteen years, there was something their coaches forgot. You really need to get a life of your own.

Why are the empty seats so offensive? Because everyone knows how the Olympics works. City officials, other government officials, politicians, washed-up athletes, and various other parasites pick your pockets to pay for this extravaganza and then reward themselves with the choicest seats: the empty seats that I’m looking at right now are in the front row of the soccer stadium where Canada is playing Great Britain. Lovely. They didn’t even bother to show up– there will be lots and lots more freebies to indulge in later.

There is a compelling drama in every really great sports narrative but not necessarily a good narrative in every drama.   No matter– the broadcasters will invent one where none exists: the athlete overcoming tremendous odds with hard work and determination (they never credit talent because you can’t buy or sell talent), the self-sacrificing parents (when most of them appear to inordinately invested in their children– literally and emotionally), the shock of failure, the bullshit of Kerri Strug or the inelegant thunky bullying impostiture of Mary Lou Retton.

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2010 Winter Olympics

The great baseball writer, Bill James, pointed out that the difference in ability between the most famous and successful ball players in the major leagues and the top tier of potential replacement players in the minor leagues is really not all that great. We think the difference is monumental– because the media give obsessive, monomaniacal attention to the players at the top level. We think, what will the Yankees do without Derek Jeter– they’ll never win another World Series! But the reality is that Jeter is only a bit better than his top potential replacement, and that difference is just a small portion of the abilities of the New York Yankees as a whole. In other words, the Yankees will generally do just about as well without Jeter as with him.

Want proof? Check out the stats of any team that trades away (or loses) one of their famous superstars. You will find that they often perform as well or even better without him.

Or all you have to do is study the stats. Pick any moment during the regular season and look at the key statistical measures of performance in baseball. Recognize all the names? Probably a few, but not all of them. Over and over again you will find the names of people you never heard of, in the top ten in the league in ERA, or OPS, or fielding percentage, or what have you. (One obvious current example: Jose Bautista from the Blue Jays leads the league in home runs.) You ask yourself, who are these nobodies? How can they possibly be in the top ten when I’ve never heard of them? The answer is, those nobodies are usually younger players who are actually performing at a higher level than their famous team-mates are. They are often actually performing better than Derek Jeter. They are often paid 1/10 or less what the famous team-mate makes.

To add to the distorting effect, established players who had big years in the past are often rewarded with huge contracts on the expectation– almost always erroneous– that they will do the same or better in the future. Then, because they have big contracts, the can’t just sit on the bench making the manager look like a fool. They must be put into the field to “prove” that the team made the right decision in giving him a big contract. Often, a superb prospect languishes on the bench, waiting for the star to come out of his slump… so he can be traded.

That seems to shock some people who seem to have this naive faith in the media to correctly size things. Why would there be 25,000 articles about Jeter and only one article about his potential replacement, if they were roughly comparable? Well, obviously because you can sell more newspapers if you can convince the general public that Jeter is very, very, very important, and that his performance on the field is nearly god-like, and that the Yankees would be a gang of pus-spurting whinnying whine-bots without him, and they need to read about him.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: you will want to read about Jeter because we put him on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You will want to see “Avatar” because every general interest magazine in the country has run an article about this movie– as if they just decided to do that on their own, and you want to watch Barbara Walters interview Sandra Bulloch because Sandra Bulloch is very important and brilliant because Barbara Walters allowed her to suck up to her and snag an interview.

Which leads me to my point: it should surprise nobody that the Swiss Olympic Hockey team is competitive with both Canada and the U.S. even if most of the Swiss players are nobodies. They are not famous, but they are not all that far below the NHL’s best in terms of talent and ability, and it only seems shocking to us that Sidney Crosby couldn’t single-handedly destroy them.

The shock of the Olympics hockey tournament for me was not the Swiss or the Americans. It was Canada defeating Russia– manhandling them, really– 7-3. I cannot recall a game in which, in international competition, Canada so dominated an extremely competitive opponent. It may have been the best game ever played by a Canadian team in World competition. All right– I’m exaggerating. I don’t know. It’s just the best, most complete game I’ve ever seen Canada play. They were intense and fast and crisp and utterly at ease tearing circles around a very, very good Russian Team.

I suspect that the reason Canada had trouble with the Swiss and the Americans and the Slovakians was because they didn’t get a 3-goal lead. Instead, with a 2-goal lead, Babcock chose to go to a 1-2-2 formation and play defense. This, of course, is a repudiation of the strategy that proved successful, and an attempt to embrace a failed strategy instead. The Americans must have thought, “thank God they stopped trying to score on us– we were getting creamed.”

Baseball teams, famously, do the same thing when they bring in a defensive replacement for the good hitter who can’t field very well. If this improved your team’s chances of winning, why not do it from the start? Your good-hitting/poor-fielding player may well already have cost your team the runs that give your opponent the lead, and the defensive player won’t hit the home-run in extra-innings that wins the game. It’s not logical.

The this way, the manager can claim that he managed and take credit for good luck.

 

“I’m living proof that dreams do come true.” Ozzy Osbourne.

The most charming moment of the Olympics: Charles Hamelin’s girlfriend Marianne St-Gelais going nuts during the final laps of the 500 metre race as Hamelin pulled ahead and then hung on to take the gold medal. St-Gelais also medaled, silver, in the women’s 500m.

I would give her a medal for her performance in the stands, for pure, unadulterated joy.

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Olympic Fakes

From steroids to music to politics, the Olympics are all about phoniness and this recent story merely confirms the truth. Nobody at any level of organization really cares about sport or competition or human achievements or international goodwill or anything like that. What they care about is selling the advertiser’s products and getting great seats for themselves and their relatives and their friends in high office for the gold medal hockey game.

What were they thinking? They were thinking, wouldn’t it be great if we could run the sound of the orchestra through a digital link to the PA system instead of through those darn microphones and mixers that just don’t seem to ever make it sound…. you know… just kind of nice. And what if an orchestra member makes a mistake? And hell, Obama did it. And — better yet– we can use a more photo-genic orchestra, which could simply mime the performance. Fabulous!

It’s despicable. But what’s really despicable is the way they act after they are caught: well, what’s wrong with it?

Well, if there isn’t anything wrong with it, why not tell everyone that you are broadcasting a recording instead of a performance? That the performers you see on the screen didn’t even perform on the recording. Why don’t you just can the orchestra all together?

Why ban steroids? If audiences get a bigger thrill from seeing records broken than from seeing a mere race, why not cheat?

Don’t forget — you and I are paying for these people to conduct these obscene rituals of mass manipulation and self aggrandizement. We are paying for it.

And hurray for Bramwell Tovey, the conductor of Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, for refusing to give in on the issue.

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The Sacred and Holy Torch of the Olympian Majesty and Dignity of Overpriced Stadiums

I just read that the RCMP and other police forces are out in force to protect the Olympic torch from being molested by protesters. The protesters think that the billions spent on the Olympics would be better spent on the poor.

There was even a helicopter in the air above the relay, to ensure that Al Qaeda didn’t swoop down and DOUSE the torch.

This is hysterical. This is the stupidest thing I’ve heard of this week– and we are in the middle of H1N1 hysteria, so that’s an accomplishment.

What is the cost of this police protection? Probably in the millions. Well, here’s a more cost-effective solution: buy more torches and tell the police to go stop people from breaking the law instead. When the protesters try to grab the torch, give it to them. Say, “here you go”. Done. Take another torch out and resume the run.

Probably, the protesters won’t find this any fun and will quickly disperse. Even if they don’t– big deal. Nobody gets hurt and nobody loses any sleep.

I’m not big on big, empty, symbolic gestures anyway, so, as far as I’m concerned, this torch run, which has become ridiculously irrelevant to everything, should be abolished anyway.

I used to think it was kind of cool… until I found out that they don’t even pay the slightest respect to the original purpose or tradition of the run. It has become a joke– a big fund-raising extravaganza, and a way to hype the games and make you think that everyone is all excited by the Olympics even if we can’t possibly afford a ticket (while we pay through the nose, through our taxes, for the facilities for it).

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Highly Symbolic Rituals by Shrunken Men

“The awards ceremony is a highly symbolic ritual, acknowledged as such by all athletes and other participants,” the IOC said. “Any disruption by any athlete, in particular a medalist, is in itself an insult to the other athletes and to the Olympic movement. It is also contrary to the spirit of fair play.” CBC, August 18, 2008

All this in connection with a Swedish wrestler who was angry about the officiating at his bout. He threw his medal to the floor.

Officials seized the medal.

The hilarious part is “highly symbolic ritual”.  A ritual is a symbol.  So they are telling you its a “symbolic symbol”.

What they mean is, you will publicly respect us to convince the public that we are not–as we appear–a gaggle of grasping privileged insiders using our positions for gratuitous personal reward.

And if you don’t we will punish you.

You thought the award was for your performance? You mad dog! The award is for us! By giving you an award we declare ourselves to be superior and powerful and beautiful because you had the privilege of receiving our blessings.

And that is why the medals are no presented by wonderful athletes of great historical accomplishments- -but by these shrunken little functionaries who move the money around or suck up to the politicians and dictators who rule the Olympics.

I’ve been watching the Olympics for about 40 years now and I never noticed any coherent symbolism to any of the ridiculous rituals that are part of the ego-fest. I suppose they mean something like “the flame symbolizes the passion of the athletes in their desire to achieve” or the way politicians burn through money erecting this monuments to their own egos while their own citizens starve, or, in China’s case, live in tents while their earthquake-ravaged villages fester hopelessly and all dissent is brutally quashed.

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1968 Olympic Scandal: the Black Power Salute

I just happened to notice that at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, where the three American athletes gave the black power salute as they stood on the podiums after receiving medals, the Mexican government had killed between 200 and 300 students in the weeks leading up to the games. These students were protesting against the dictatorial policies of the one-party Mexican state. The CIA had reported to the U.S. government that the students had agreed to refrain from protesting during the Olympics. The Mexican government didn’t feel like waiting to find out. They didn’t want an embarrassment.

The Olympics loves to claim that they are “apolitical” and most rational people have realized long ago that that claim is utter bullshit: the Olympics are the expression of the hosting regime’s legitimacy and stature.  Officials from governments of all participating countries glory in the success of their athletes.  Audiences everywhere are only interested in events in which someone from their country has a shot at winning.  Sports that favor a particular country (women’s soccer, for example, basketball) are included while other sports (buzkashi, for example) are not.  It is absolutely saturated with politics.

Okay. Kill 200 – 300 students– no problem. The Americans were delighted to honor the Mexican government by participating.

Raise your fist, as if you don’t believe in America the wonderful, the blessed, the just?

It was Avery Brundage, the American president of the IOC, who insisted they be banned from the Olympic Village.  (They did not, contrary to popular myth, have to return their medals.)  Avery Brundage– who had no objection to the Nazi salute at the 1936 games in Berlin.  I am not kidding.  Brundage was a known Nazi sympathizer up U.S. entry into the war.

The U.S. Olympic Committee– to their credit– refused to ban them from the Olympic village until Avery Brundage threatened to ban the entire U.S. track team.

It’s scandalous. It’s absolutely scandalous. And don’t forget that the people who made that judgment– who decided that the Olympics should go on even if the Mexican government murders hundreds of students and even if the the Mexican government was a one-party dictatorship– and then decided that the these three black athletes should be escorted out of the Olympic village– these people were part of that large, large group of gratuitous sycophants and parasites called “the Olympic Delegation” and your tax dollars help pay for their hotels and champagne.

And they really should add Buzkashi to the roster.

[Yes, I know– in the U.S., most money for the Olympic teams is raised privately. But that’s not total cost of maintaining and supporting a national Olympic team. There are stadiums and universities. And because the donations to the Olympic teams is tax deductible– aren’t they?– you really are subsidizing them. ]

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An Honest Olympics

I propose an honest Olympics. We set up a new international organization. Every four years, we select about 50 people at random from a pool of volunteers from each country. And I mean “random”, as in, “from the general population”. Not athletes. I don’t care how pathetic they are– I want to see them race, jump, throw, and swim. I want to know that the winners did it without cheating, because they couldn’t have cheated.

The competition will be held in existing sports facilities– none of this billions of dollars in new stadiums and housing crap.  They can stay in the nearest college dorm.

And when they win a competition, they actually have to sing their own national anthems, solo, in front of thousands of people.

Then you get your medal.

Seriously: I would enjoy watching this way, way more than the current ugly spectacle of the Olympics.

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Figure Skating Scandal at the Olympics

If I were in charge of the ISU, here’s how I would have solved the huge scandal over the pairs figure-skating competition. Call me crazy, but here’s what I would have done:

1. Convene all the judges for a press conference. Direct them to answer every question put to them by the world’s media. Have side-by-side videos of the two disputed performances on the screen to illustrate. Let them defend, in detail, their rankings and choices.

Issue these stern directives to all the judges:

– answer honestly, politely, and completely.
– take every question seriously
– don’t be afraid to admit mistakes

Oh. And remove your blindfolds before the press conference.

2. Have the two pairs concerned join the press conference and add their comments to the questions and answers. Were all the moves equally difficult? Which elements of your program did you think were more difficult than those of your competitors?

3. Acknowledge that the judges don’t like it when public perception is different from the scoring results. Don’t blame it on an ignorant public. Accept the blame for not doing a good enough job of communicating to everyone what the standards are. Encourage people to look closely at all figure skating results and make helpful suggestions where-ever possible.

I know the judges would read these suggestions in horror. You can’t expect ignorant peasants to understand the subtleties of figure-skating! And the judges would be right. Do you know the difference between a double-lutz and a double-axle? Me neither. But the public doesn’t know how ignorant they are right now. And they will know it even less the more you imply, with your actions, your secrecy, and your jealously guarded privileges, that you don’t give a damn about what anybody thinks, as long as you get your travel and accommodations and meals paid for.

Did Sale and Pelletier earn the gold medal? I think they probably did, but it’s not cut and dried. The Russians skated a powerful program, though they were clearly not as fluid and smooth as Sale and Pelletier were. The Russians say their skate was more difficult, but nobody can identify the particularities of this.

The real problem was that the actual skating at the competition didn’t seem to matter. The skaters, as in ice dancing, are locked into their positions early on and their free skates and long programs have almost no effect on their final position. The Americans certainly seemed to have skated better than the Chinese on their long program, but they moved nary a centimeter.

In ice dancing, Bourne and Kraatz will finish 4th, as usual.