Enough of the Bashing - its the Olympics!

August 14th, 2008 | Current Events, Rantings by ParisB

You know, I’ve never been as sick of the Olympics as I have been in recent days. I don’t mean that I’m sick of it. I love the Olympics and everything it stands for. I always see it as a triumph of the human spirit where upsets happen all the time in any sporting discipline irrespective of country might and money.

I love the idea behind the Olympics, where athletes from all over the world come to compete and (traditionally) all wars are halted to foster the spirit of friendly rivalty.

I don’t know what it is about China hosting the 2008 Olympic Games thats gotten the world’s pants in a twist. Every other day, I’m reading complaints about Chinese gymnasts being underaged, or that the opening ceremony was not as spectactular as it was, or that China has spent too much money building the water cube where the water sports are held… and China did this and China did not do that … and the list goes on. I find Yahoo Sports a big culprit in encouraging derogatory comments about the host country - first by tweaking the medal tally and in their truly skewed reporting. They should give fair coverage to the sports not make comments about how much the water cube costs and why the Chinese could not build a wall around the showers.

In my view, China is doing as decent a job of hosting the world’s biggest games as Athens or Sydney. We don’t hear complaints about how much Athens or Sydney spent. In fact, cities have gone bankrupt by hosting the Olympic Games. I’m sure Barcelona has a tale to tell. Will we be hearing about how much London will spend to host the 2012 Games? Will we still be hearing about Chinese gymnasts then or will we have some England bashing? I seriously doubt the latter.

Why am I not hearing that the 52kg Thai girl who lifted a record 126kg in the weightlifting championships is not legit? She is tiny and her lifting technique was effortless. She deserves her Gold medal as do the Chinese gymnasts who displayed a good performance. Performing before a home crowd always brings out the best in any athelete - ask our Jaguh Kampungs and they can tell you that. The USA swept the medals at the Los Angeles and Atlanta Olympics - we didn’t hear them complain then.

I’m not defending China in any other aspect other than their performance in hosting the Games. I’m just saying that it is the Olympics and if you win, kudos to you. If you lose out, you had a bad day, better luck next time, try again in 4 years. Phelps is dominating the swimming events and I’m sure the Americans are proud of him. They have every right to be, the same way the Australians adored Ian Thorpe when he was King of the Pool in Sydney. We don’t hear of allegations that Phelps must be on steriods to be the size he is and have the power he has or that the Americans must have pumped him up with something illegal that escapes detection.

So, I think what the world needs to do is take a step back and remember that we are all different. Asians have a smaller built and face it, look younger than our Caucasian counterparts. Different sporting disciplines result in people having different body physiques and different races capitalise on that. Look at track events. Blacks and Africans dominate mainly due to their size and physique. Swimmers need height as well as arms and caucasians have the upper hand. In the gymnasium and in diving a smaller size means less weight and more agility and Asians face it, fall in this category. In fact, I remember watching the Romanian team once who used to dominate the gymnastics events and they were really tiny too. So, if you can’t get that sort of physique it might be time to blame your ancestry not others.

I’ve had my say. Comments are closed. I dont’ want to have to deal with people telling me about why China is not being fair to their people and spending too much money instead of feeding the poor, because this is NOT what it is about.