Team USA

In case you live under a rock, or just incredibly remotely, the Beijing Olympics began this past weekend.  Jud and I have always enjoyed watching the Olympics, and this round has been no different. We have, however, made a few notes about these games…

We’re not sure when Visa decided that “Go World” was a good slogan, and we understand it’s a global company, but frankly, we want the US to bring home more golds, silvers and bronzes than anyone else. Why is wanting our team to win suddenly not the point of the games?  Everyone’s all “the world comes together” but it’s as if they’ve forgotten the last half “to prove who is the best”.  We’re not all winners.  The ones who are, come in first.  

Speaking of coming in first, we stayed up past our self imposed bedtime to see the US men’s 4×100 team eek out a win over the snotty French team who had claimed that they would ‘smash’ our team.  It was an insanely close finish and it was almost unbelievable.  It was the stuff of miracles, and it was all the more sweet given the trash talking. Oh, and I didn’t feel even a twinge of sorrow for the French. 

The women’s gymnastic team came out under intense pressure given that two of them were injured, forcing all of the scores to count on a number of events.  They stepped out of bounds.  They fell off the uneven bars.  They didn’t stick all of their landings…until they got to the beam, where they somehow got it all back together and finally posted a score higher than the Chinese team, who by the way, have girls on their team who look like they are twelve, if that.  There was some questioning about their ages (they have to be at least 16 to compete) but I’m sure there is still no way to really verify their ages. One of their tiniest is an amazing little thing, He Kexin, and she’s an animal on the bars, but she slipped off last night.  You could see the disappointment and the pain of failure. It was just the prelims and her score still qualified her to do the individual apparatus, but she was really upset.  The juxtaposition of her and our girls who made mistakes was striking. I know that culture is a part of it, but I also think it has a lot to do with the maturity of three or four years.  There’s a reason why they aren’t supposed to compete until their sixteen.  

For as much as China has opened her doors to the outside, and as much as they are trying to do their coming out party the right way, they are still an oppressive regime, keeping people working in situations of unbelievable conditions. For all the lip service they pay to respecting nature and being in harmony with the earth, they have committed some of the worst pollutive acts imaginable and force their people to deal with the repercussions in unimaginable ways. It’s great that China has made progress, and according to a Chinese-Canadian we know, they will get to democracy in the next twenty years as long as the west stays out of their affairs.  I’m still saddened by the oppression, still questioning if they can leave their dark past of communism, still hoping for a future as bright as the image they are projecting today.

PS – The Project Runway challenge for last week: Uniforms for the US Olympic ladies to wear to opening ceremonies.  There were some hideous outfits.  And then I watched the opening ceremonies and realized that there were even worse options out there….