IN an
earlier rant I portrayed the efficiently murderous missiles being developed by a Russian-Indian partnership as shuttlecocks for the impending Illympic sport of
water badminton. Little did I know that badminton would become the focus of a
Sino-West showdown at the London Games.
Life follows art in the world of badmimton
These
shockin’ awful Illympic Games have become a political nightmare with China
accused of progressing from drug cheats to all-round cheats.
It
is as if the final medal count between China and the U.S. will be reflective of
whether the American or Sino economy rules the world.
Great
American author/ essayist/ polemicist/ all-round wordsmith Gore Vidal
invariably showed impeccable timing throughout his lifetime. Vidal did not help
matters by dying during what will become known as the Chinese Badminton Crisis,
named after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Vidal scandalised the U.S by suggesting China
would become the new Superpower, sending care packages to Washington, New York
and San Francisco. He had the temerity to die in the midst of the crisis, reminding everyone of his prediction.
China
was one of the four Asian teams disqualified from the badminton competition.
Their transgressions were gloriously oxymoronic: they were losing games in
order to win medals. Cheating it was, according to OIC officials.
Now, in most sporting contests, losing to win is a futile exercise. After preliminary
contests, the best performing sides are seeded against the worst performing
sides. Apparently this is not the case with Illympic badminton and one Chinese side had to throw a game
in order to be in the medal fight with another Chinese side.
A
casual observer such as me might think the structure of the sport is wrong.
Not
so according to the esteemed English popular newspaper the Daily Mail. It’s
simply the Chinese are cheats and they have been at it for a long time.
“ Chinese
players had been scheduled to meet 99 times in 2011: on 20 occasions the game
was either not played, or not completed. When China played China, 19.8 per cent
of games did not reach a conclusion."
In case you do no get it, 20 out of 99 = 19.8 per cent
Now I suspect, for many badminton competitions, this is the way to work your
way through a flawed system when you want to win,
Apparently, the Daily Mail thought it
was nefarious, which is obviously evil, being a multisyllabic word you
reluctantly have to put in your paper.
“China were expected to
win every gold medal at the London Olympic Games and all reasonable evidence
suggested that the athletes and coaches at the pinnacle of the sport were
behaving in a nefarious manner. Instead, a blind eye was turned. Today, the
reputation of badminton is in tatters."
I believe that should have read “China was expected to win” but
the image of invading red hordes was better conveyed by “were”.
Other reports likened the Chinese
selection and training processes to human rights abuse. The best of them have
the Buddhist/ Daoist/ Communist medal winners being downright unchristian.
Back
and forth across the Olympic the pool, the accusations fly like shuttlecocks;
it is water badminton.
The latest design in shuttlecocks for water badminton
expected to be an Olympic sport in 2020
Chinese
swimmer Shiwen Ye was the catalyst for the first of a barrage of snide remarks when she
won the 400m individual medley. It should have been a fairy tale result as Ye
easily swam her personal best and snatched a world record. But it turned into a
fairy tale directed by Tim Burton as the dark news unfolded that the Chinese
schoolgirl had swum a faster final 50m than Ryan Lochte who had won the men’s
equivalent and relegated super swimmer Michael Phelps to a medal-less fourth in the process.
At first no
one quite yelled out Ye was a drug cheat: that would be against the Olympic spirit of these carping back-biting Games.
Lochte
served up just a hint of suspicion as he told journos the American camp
discussed it over dinner. ‘She’s fast,’ he told reporters, just in case any of
the scribes had not noticed.
It
was wise to help out the world’s media with an indisputable piece of copy. It
was not only the swim which had the world’s media declaring there were two Shiwen.
Yes. I am not sure about the exact proportion
but let’s say half the world’s media believe her name is Ye Shiwen. I am with
the “Shiwen Ye” half because that is all she writes in the official Games
website. For those wishing to argue the toss at your own dinner party, Ye is the family name.
Australian
swimming commentator and former Olympic medallist Susie O’Neill was known as
Madam Butterfly in her heyday. She was more Madam Math as she gave her opinion
of the swim of Mademoiselle Ye. ‘Every time we see a good Chinese swimmer….there’s
just that .0001 per cent at the back of mind.’
It
might have been at the back of Madam Butterfly’s mind but it butterflew to the front
of her lips.
The
coyness of such remarks failed to impress a former Chinese swimming official
who did not confucius with maths or dinner-party banter in returning the water
shuttlecock.
Shanghai Chen was the head of the Chinese Olympic medical
team in Los Angeles, Seoul and Barcelona. ‘America’s (Michael) Phelps broke
seven world records! Is he normal?’ Dr Chen asked.
Before a journo could ask the sensible question ‘what’s your
definition of normal’, Chen made it clear drug cheating was abnormal.
‘I suspect Phelps, but without
evidence,’ he said. This sounded like the distillation of a conversation at a tea,
rather than dinner, party. ‘I have to recognise that we should be grounded in
facts,’
Dr Chen said.
That is how you engage in war of drug cheating without
either side making an outright accusation against the other.
‘The Americans are very bad; they do a lot of evil,’ Dr Chen
said
Swimming pools are central to geopolitics: with the medico’s
unsophisticated diagnosis, all became clear.
Congratulations Azerbaijan
Valentin Hristov,
18, won OlympicbronzeforAzerbaijanin theclean and jerk56-kg
weight class) event.
In another upset, North
Korea'sOm Yun Cholwon the gold ahead of Chinese world championJingbiao Wu (or Wu Jingbiao, take your pick).
Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, watched the success of
Bulgarian-born Hristov.
The Republic of Azerbaijan is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north,
Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to
the west, and Iran to the south.
All may not be forgiven but this journalist
is glad to see a nation which is not a household name in the West take home a
medal. We applaud you in the traditional manner.
Olympic Rant
#7 More surprises than at a Tea Party Geography Quiz
UPSETS are
the order of the first daze of the 2012 Games.
Super swimmer Michael Phelps set
the tone when he was unplaced in his first final, the 400m individual motley.
Some thought Michael Phelps swam in a dinner suit
Phelps made amends, of sorts when he able to rub his 17th
Olympic medal, but it was only a silver when
the Americans were swum down by the French
in the freestyle relay. The
French? Sure we know they can speak incomprehensible philosophy under water but
who knew they could move so fast on top of it. The favourites, the Aussies,
came an unimpressive fourth.
In the sabre version of poking-holes-in-people, Hungarian Aron Szilagyi, ranked only sixth in the world,won the gold.
The victory took those of us with long memories or fertile imaginations
back to the glorious 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm.
The 1912 Hungarian poking-holes-in-people team.
The final eight in the sabre poking-holes-in-people were seven
Hungarians and one Italian.
Nedo Nadi really took it to the Hungarians and the plucky Italian
finished sixth. Jeno Fuchs overcame ridicule, in primary school because of his
name, to take the gold.
Jeno and his fellow six finalists as well as Aron, we salute you, although
we leave our sabres in their scabbard.
If these upsets keep up, they will feed the families of sundry academics
for generations. Psychologists, social scientists, sports medicos, politico
types and economists will argue whether the
upsets mean the decline of the West.
The Tea Party will blame Barack Obama who fixed the Games to support an African nation. Most Tea Party members
know where the country is because they saw a doco on Hungary Africa.
THESE Olympic reports are written from the edge of the city
and the jaws of hell.
The city in question is Brisbane where, as in all fair cities of
Australia, good drug and alcohol-fuelled
citizens are regularly bashing one another senseless, and occasionally
lifeless. Friday and Saturday nights are
the preferred times for such mayhem but
any warm or cool enchanted evening will do.
I am confident the industrious denizens of the western world’s capital
cities are similar indulging in random violence to share the terror of life in
war zones.
This is why these reports on the noble Olympic games are writ from the
jaws of hell. Our patron for the Capital-G Games is Thomas Hobbes.
London Games Patron
Before we introduce our patron to the enthusiastic international
audience we should satisfy ourselves that we indeed live in violent times. Over
a long period in journalism I have seen the reality of falling crime rates go hand-in-hand with public perceptions of their increase . Some politicians and
sections of the media love to play the crime card: a fearful population are an
impressionable lot.
I believe the perception of violent
crime today matches the reality. For a long time, I have toyed with the notion that
times of war and lauded militarism create parallel violence in civilian populations. My days of meandering through the halls of
higher learning are long gone but I would like a phD student test my theory in a thesis. What the civilian ‘Libyan “liberators”, of
the National Transitional
Council, theGonzoid rants on the London Olympics 2012.
WARNING: This video has been
identified as potentially offensive or inappropriate by some viewers.
Most of the assailants appear to
be unarmed civilians watched by gun toters in military-style dress.
This was an inauspicious start for Libyan democracy.
Meet
our patron
Thomas Hobbes is a 17th century English
philosopher. I say ``is’’ as Tough Tom is alive in many people’s heads.
Hobbes wrote that you should bash people long and hard before they have
a chance to fuck you over. Hobbes went on that, in a sophisticated society, the
State could do the pre-emptive bashing
on your behalf. He wrote these things in
my version of his book Leviathan. My
version only exists in my head but you can download another edition here http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3207
The Religious Right owe a great debt to Hobbes. This is why they like
to shooy at things while they spread the a-Hobbesian gospel of the free market.
You can see why Thomas Hobbes is an excellent patron for the London
Olympics 2012.
In rant #2, we introduce the Games national anthems of England,
the United States and Australia.
Olympic shorts
GREATER London 16-year-old Mahamed Awale recently tweeted: USAIN BOLT IZ
A V GD FRIEND OF MINE HIM BCOMIN A RUNNA WOZ MA IDEA.
I don’t know that time line and geographic distance pans out to validate
Awale’s contention.
But Mahamed was kicked off one of those
reality TV shows in the first round. Being booted first-up from the BBC Series2 of Young Apprentice gives the lad a lot of cred in my book.
THIS reminds me of when I covered the final Goodwill Games in Brisbane
in 2001.
American Ted Turner began the Goodwill Games in Moscow in 1986 in response to the politicisation of
the Olympics after the 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
The games were bought from Ted Turner by Time Warnerwhen Turner's company merged with TW in
1986. TW promised to keep the Goodwill Games alive
The corporation descended from Warner Bros which brought the world,
hungry for justice, John Wayne movies. That lineage was interested in
namby-pamby sports détente and they canned the games when ratings tanked in
America.
At the final Brisbane Games I interviewed reigning Olympic 100m champion American Maurice Greene who broke
down in Goodwill Games preparation and did not compete.
It was at the Goodwill Games
that I suggested Greene become a runner. No, wait, that cannot be right. I
suggested, as he wasn’t competing at the Games, we go to Brisbane’s best Chinese
restaurant and do a runner before the bill came. Maurice declined.
THE Olympic Gold medals and
memorabilia of Australia’s first ever
double Olympic Medal winner Bobby Pearce (1905-1976), will be auctioned at Bonhams Olympic Games Sale on 25 July 2012. The Olympic Games sale will be held
at Bonhams Knightsbridge, London, saleroom in case you wish to pop down. that way.
Rower Pearce went to the Amsterdam
1928 Games and won the Gold from American entrant Kenneth Myers who was said to
be so disgusted that he smashed his boat.
Pearce won skulls gold again at the Los Angeles
Olympiad in 1932.
Pearce’s Olympic
Gold stuff is expected to fetch £30,000
– 50,000 ($44,000 - $73,000 AUD and much the same in US dollars). I have Maurice Greene's autograph on an Goodwill Games cap if the under-bidder is interested.
If you
enjoyed the first of this Gonzoid Games coverage please re-blog or a share a
link to this blog.
