Olympic Friday

It’s the small things, the small details, that amuse me about the Olympics. Like did you watch the Chinese dude in the 110m Hurdles Final? That’s one fast Chinese kid. He won gold in world record time, but the best part is he looked like a 5 year old kid doing it, running with a unique “arms flailing about” technique, as if he’s running away from the bogie man. Then when he was celebrating, he got blocked out by a track and field official cuz he almost ran into some javelin thrower (imagine the headlines, if that contact went wrong)… and then he then turns around and progresses to celebrate awkwardly, pointing at the crowd like Hulk Hogan. Which prompted my irish friend Miriam to say “He’s celebrating too much, the Chinese aren’t know for their hurdle skill are they?”

Or there’s the Japan chick who ran the 10K final, and it looked like she ran the whole time with her mouth wide open. Is there anything more amusing than a Japanese chick with big bushy hair, running with her mouth wide open? In the Olympic final for a gold medal? I cant help but imagine she was yellin “BAAAAAHHHHH” the whole time while she ran, which reminds me of Angelo from elementary school, who took the special bus to school. She lost by the way, lapped even. And does it make it any funnier that her head is absolutely huge? So yeah, that’s been the bulk of my Olympic experience today. Its been fun, an enjoyable Friday. I love the Olympics.

Being in Ireland, Im also in a unique position to watch these Athens Games from Irish and British eyes. RTE for Ireland, and BBC for the UK are my two main outlets here for the Olympics. I was actually quite looking forward to this, coming into August. It meant leaving behind the NBC coverage, whose “USA! USA!” bravado, contrived tape delay broadcasts and feel good background stories make it look like its produced by Oprah. Unfortunately though, after almost two weeks of Olympics viewing, I found out that RTE and BBC are really not much better. First of all, RTE tends to show all the crappy second tier sports that I couldn’t give two shits about, like field hockey, hammer toss, sailing, team handball and water polo. Handball? I didn’t even know this sport existed past the 7th grade. Also, Ireland is doing terrible in these Olympics, yet still RTE insists on showing all the loser Irish athletes that finished something like a 8th during qualifying. I guess as a national broadcaster, you got to show your guys, but day after day, pining hopes on athletes that are obviously outclassed, you start to feel sorry for Ireland. Like the other week, the Irish mens doubles sculls rowing squad came out to a blistering start in their final, but quickly got caught up to and passed, ending up finishing 6th or something. In the interview, the rower said “I think we rowed a incredibly good race, and if the other boats weren’t so fast, we coulda won”. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Brilliant. Finally though, today, in the final few days of the Olympics, Ireland got their first medal, and its in the showstopper event of equestrian show jumping. The winner, Cian O’Connor is a national hero now, in fact his parents was just interviewed live at home on national TV. Now Im preparing myself and dreading the next few days, where this horse jumping exhibit will be celebrated, analyzed and repeated ad nauseum. Arghh… its horse jumping for Pete’s sake.

BBC on the other hand, is a little like the Americans, in that they overty trump up their athletes to unreal levels. When they win gold in anything, its a sickingly brash celebration, with BBC Commentators yelling its “Olympic champion! Olympic champion! This is the best thing to ever happen ever!” (each and everytime, in a pompy english accent). This especially hurt when the British fours rowing team barely edged out the Canadians last week. And when their athletes fail, the commentators either openly put on a face of denial or provide built-in excuses. The best example is Paula Racliffe. So last Sunday, here’s Paula, world record holder, British deity, and gold medal favorite, competing in the marathon, and for some reason (fatigue, maybe) with like 4 miles to go, she puts her hands on her sides, stops running and doesn’t even finish. She gave up. BBC then goes on to comment “that is sooo unfortunate, but Paula will keep her chin up, she is a great athlete, great champion, she is not a quitter…” … but ummm, no…on the contrary I think she is… she just quit, actually. Look, shes right there sitting on the roadside. Murray, who works beside me and is from New Zealand, had a field day enjoying BBCs effort in trying to turn the Paula lemon situation in to proverbial lemonade. They covered up, made excuses, the whole shebang, and openly wondered if she would re-establish her dominance in the 10K race. Fast forward 5 more days to today for the 10K Final. Paula started off okay, but somewhere along the line she picked up a 70 lbs backpack (or from her body language it sure looked like it). Close to halfway through, with her patented head bobbing run style, she was struggling mightily. And then, she slips further and further back from lead pack, falling back to near the stragglers group which included the open mouth japan chick. Not liking how things were going, she just got fed up and again pulls up and starts walking. She quit AGAIN! Its not like Felicien, who unfortunately tripped during her race, but she actually just said “screw it, I wont win so Ive had enough”. I started laughing, really loud, I couldn’t help it. Like as if I didn’t see that coming. BBC then goes on “Running the 10,000 meter, 5 days after running the marathon. Its really is difficult to recover from”. Well, that’s if she actually finished the marathon, maybe…

Well this is the kind of stuff I had to watch instead of something really important, like the USA Basketball team losing to Argentina in the semi-final. All I got to see instead was show jumping and womens javelin. Stupid Ireland.