Everything's OK Now

The truth is that over its recent history, the International Olympic Committee has proved that there are very, very few totalitarian dictatorial buttocks which it will not kiss a la Crash Davis, but their supernatural ability to do so while also assuming both supine and prone positions in front of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party is a miraculous sight. Not a sight to behold, mind you, at least not in front of the kids, but certainly a miraculous one.

As noted earlier here and elsewhere, former Chinese tennis player -- and Olympian -- Peng Shuai first accused a former Chinese government official of coercing her into sex. Then she disappeared, and an obviously faked email claimed she recanted her accusation and just wanted to be left alone. The IOC, recognizing the danger facing its last tattered shreds of respectability and a lucrative partner relationship, acted swiftly.

IOC President Thomas Bach, either explicitly or implicitly, offered his organization's services in the fakery of convincing everyone that Peng was just fine. Bach claimed that he and other IOC members spoke to Peng in a 30-minute international video call and she's all A-OK, so there's no need to move the February 2022 Winter Games from China. Pictures that are supposed to represent the phone call were released, but the full video has yet to be (perhaps making sure all gun barrels aimed at Peng remain offscreen.)

I think there was a call, as I can't believe the IOC would go so low as to help with a photoshop that made it look like there was. But I'm almost certain that listening to it would make clear what a tissue of lies the CCP is trying to sell and how eagerly the IOC is to help close the deal so as not to endanger its commission. If this pattern continues and the IOC keeps participating, it's going to owe a lot of apologies to the former East German judges for impugning the honesty of their results.

The Thrill of Victory

One of the things that not having cable lets me do is surf clips from events that I might want to see on my own time, which I have found to be the best way to watch the Olympics. Medal celebrations, superb sportsmanship, displays of character and honor -- these are all great to watch. I think I've mentioned elsewhere that moments like that, in which athletes realize their dream, be it victory or just competing on this stage, are among the reasons the corrupt and hypocritical games leadership groups disgust me.

It allows me to skip the people whose protest gestures seem less about drawing attention to their causes and more about drawing attention to them. Although it's nice when some of the loudest voices skip themselves for you by falling well below expectations or missing a medal altogether.

As a final thought, I am a firm believer that medal counts mean nothing about a nation's actual merits. The United States won more medals than totalitarian China, as well as more golds, but had those standings been reversed this is still a better place to live.

On the other hand, "United States Olympians: Sending Commies home in second place since Lake Placid 1980" has a nice ring to it.

Sacrifice

I feel sorry for gymnast Simone Biles, although she won't ever know it and certainly doesn't need it. One of the comments she's made in recent weeks is that she feels like she has the "weight of the world on her shoulders." It's easy to see why. She is clearly the most powerful and gifted women's gymnast of her generation. She has the strength and speed to succeed at moves so far beyond her competitors that her sport's international governing body will refuse to award the difficulty points they merit just to keep the score close.

Competitors accept as justified the pressure of being No. 1 and having everyone gunning for you, Many thrive on it. But our culture has laid much more on Ms. Biles. So many different interest groups make her their hero because of the many roadblocks she had to overcome in her life -- foster care, abuse by USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nasser, the treacherous cover-up of that abuse by the adults running the federation that was supposed to look out and care for her and so on. She was expected to be a voice for persons of color during tumultuous racial times because she was a public figure who was African-American. And sports media's ridiculous obsession with hanging the albatross of GOAT (Greatest of All Time) on certain athletes, blathered (and cared) about mostly by people who only watch the competitions. All of this and more while she is, at 24, simultaneously very very young to handle this load but also approaching that cutoff point for her peak skills. And while she is in a weird Olympics without spectators and staged a year late because of a pandemic.

I feel sorry for Ms. Biles mostly because she may have thought stepping back from competing because all of these different pressures had finally unbalanced her superhuman focus would somehow relieve her of them. She anticipated, I am sure, those who would label her a "quitter," but just as one expects a toddler to make a mess in his or her diaper, one might expect such people to make that judgment.

What she probably didn't anticipate that she would gain an entirely new expectation she didn't ask for: Champion of mental health awareness. Instead of easing out from under the pressure of being the Slay! Queen! of gymnastics she is now also the new avatar of self-care. Everything that has ever happened in the sport will now be re-evaluated in light of the new most courageous person who has ever lived. Rather than value individuals as such, we will now have her as our new paradigm that will let us look with a little bit of sadness and a whole lot of pity on those who may have made different choices at their own crisis points of competition.

I've already seen the first Facebook post that compares her to Kerri Strug, whose vault while injured during the 1996 Atlanta Games has been considered an example of competitive courage. Rather than value each woman for the choice she made when she made it, the post compares Biles' wise decision with Strug's risky one. It blames the tyrannical Bela Karolyi, Strug's coach, for coercing her to make what turned out to be an unneeded vault so the poster can skirt around making a direct judgment of Biles over Strug, but that's certainly the hint the reader is desired to take. Does Simone Biles, born the year after Strug's vault, think of her decision in that way? Who knows? Who cares? We think of it that way, and we will control this narrative too, thank you very much.

I feel sorry for Ms. Biles because with her decision, she may have thought she escaped what everyone else wanted from her and moved into a place where she could do what she wanted when, how and as she wanted. Nope, sorry. This is the 21st century, and when we put someone on the altar of popular culture to sacrifice them to our expectations, we decide when they can get off. Not them.

Medalist!

One of the reasons to dump so heavily on the corrupt International Olympic Committee and corner-cutting dictatorships is for the times when people like Hidilyn Diaz win a gold medal. Diaz won a gold in women's power-lifting, meaning that for the first time in the history of the summer games, an audience heard Lupang Hinirang sung during the medal presentation. And I mean heard it sung.

Search for video of Diaz's lifts and you'll find a cell-phone video from someone in the Philippines watching from among the limited number of spectators. And when it shifts to Diaz's medal presentation and the hoisting of the flags, the Philippine Air Force sergeant snaps a precision salute as her anthem is played and the sounds of the phone holder and the surrounding people singing their anthem at full volume dominate the feed.

Every time we read about some sticky-fingered IOC official, or some stupid rule that women can't wear shorts in a sport where men can, or some totalitarian regime that will ruin a hundred lives to get one competitor -- or, lately, someone who thinks that Citius - Altius - Fortius adds up to Smarter and Better than You-ius -- we can forget people like Hidilyn Diaz, who was exiled to another country for two years by COVID when she went there to train. Who had to hone her style and strength in a carport because the virus closed the gyms. Who raised money while doing that so food packages could be bought and delivered to poor families locked down and unable to work back in the homeland she hasn't seen in two years.

I'm not unaware that the Philippines are currently run by a strongman-style regime less enamored of human rights than we might wish. I'd rather live here than there because I'm freer here and better off. But one of those blessings here is free speech, which a lot of us say we believe in. So if some athletes significantly more privileged than Diaz want to push the envelope and protest perceived injustices by drawing attention to themselves they should have our blessing.

But when we compare them to someone whose journey to the medal podium was like Hidilyn Diaz's, let's not pretend they should have our respect.

IOC Strikes Again

Around the world, there is no small amount of grumbling about the way that the ruling Chinese Communist Party treats its citizens, especially residents of Hong Kong who keep making unreasonable demands like being allowed to say what they want. Also annoying is the way that the Uygher people would like to not be wiped out and they keep saying so when they get the chance.

In a better world, these kinds of actions would make the International Olympic Committee deny any bids by the CCP to host the Olympic Games. In our world it means that the Winter Games will be held in Beijing in February 2022. In a slightly improved world the IOC would rescind the hosting offer as more and more human rights abuses come to light. In our world the IOC will let itself be bought off by China's offer to to provide its COVID-19 vaccine to all athletes competing in the rescheduled Summer Games in Tokyo this summer.

Left unresolved is how many of the visiting athletes will want to be jabbed by something made by the same nation whose role in the early spread of the virus remains shrouded in silence and denial. Even if everything about the initial release and contagion of SARS CoV-2 was merely accidental, might athletes wonder whether the vaccine offered by the Chinese government might also put them off their best game just a wee bit? Or contain products that might not pass muster on a drug test for banned substances and performance enhancers?

The IOC isn't asking those questions, of course. Wouldn't want to break a perfect record of obliviousness to its more horrible national participants and hosts.

Three Things to Read

My headline literalism game is strong, people.

-- Terry Teachout on the development of the Western and why, contrary to the opinion of many, it really isn't dead.

-- If you see a squirrel three feet long that's got four different colors of fur -- including a two-foot tail -- you might have been over-served. Unless, of course, you live in Malabar, India, where you have actually spotted a shekru, or Malabar Giant Squirrel.

-- Back during the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, an American woman named Elizabeth Swaney competed in the skiing halfpipe for the Hungarian team, since she had Hungarian grandparents. As one of the sort of modern "X-Games" kinds of sports, the halfpipe is supposed to feature some aerial acrobatics and tricks, but Swaney simply skied up and down one side of the pipe and then the other, coming away with the lowest score of the Games. Other halfpipe skiers welcomed and congratulated her on achieving a dream to be an Olympic athlete; commenters on Twitter and Instagram, as well as real world journalists whose own athletic achievements had never been cause for notice derided her. Last month California Sunday Magazine writer Davy Rothbart profiled Swaney and showed what a neat story she really has, as she works toward her next challenge: Competing on American Ninja Warrior. The CBS sports writer who said Swaney accomplished “the real American dream: Scamming the system to achieve your life goals while doing the absolute bare minimum to get there," meanwhile, co-hosts a podcast and has almost as many awards as Swaney has Olympic medals.

Stunned!

It's good that all of the Russian athletes who couldn't be proven to be using performance enhancers were allowed to compete in the Olympics anyway. We wouldn't want innocent folks to be tarred with the same brush as the guilty ones...what? OK, nevermind.

Reawakening

-- Pitchers and catchers have started work at their respective professions, and position players will show up to the sunny spots in a few days.

Can't happen soon enough.

-- Driving home from the gym, I heard the glorious slice of trashy pop-punk known as Transvision Vamp's "I Want Your Love." On my radio. Thanks, Ferris!

-- Luge sledders slide down an icy track at speeds of more that 80 miles an hour while laying on their backs. Skeleton sledders slide down an icy track at speeds of more than 80 miles an hour while laying on their stomachs. I've been watching the Winter Olympics to see which group is crazier and I'm not sure. I do know that they're all braver than I am.

Back To Normal

For awhile I was worried that the International Olympic Committee had grown a spine and integrity. You may remember that they dropped the hammer on the Russian Olympic team after discovering widespread cheating on drug tests. You and I probably think that banning a country from participating means that athletes from that country would not be at the Winter Olympics that just opened in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

But you and I are not members of the International Olympic Committee. The Pyeonchang games will not have a Russian flag, nor will the Russian national anthem be heard. But 168 Russian athletes will be competing as "Olympic Athletes from Russia," because they won their cases with the Court of Arbitration in Sport that they can't be proven to have cheated.

As the writer of the story notes, one of the features of the Russian scheme to foil the World Anti-Doping Agency's tests makes it tough to find evidence that would prove any cheating happened.

It's nice to know things are back to normal: Some of the world's best athletes compete against other great athletes and have great stories, for a few the dream turns into reality as they stand tallest to receive their honors.

And down in the sewers, the people who run this show line their own wallets under cover of those dreams and dreamers. I sometimes wonder that they can stand their own stench.

Fire It Up!

This item at Wired opens up some of the secrets behind the wild drone show that was a part of the Winter Olympics opening ceremonies. It's an interesting article, but having watched some of the ceremony while on the treadmill, I'd say that the highlight is what it always is. Watching the athletes; mostly young, having the times of their lives as the center of attention of a huge production, about to compete on the biggest stage in the world and in general cuter than a crate of kittens.

This is their moment. There will be time enough to talk about the slime that runs the show starting tomorrow.

International Olympic Committee Provides Historic Hint It May Have a Spine

If you were hoping to cheer on some Russian athletes in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, you are out of luck. In a move that could actually be the first step in its evolution to vertebrate status, the International Olympic Committe has told that country to not bother showing up.

What seems to have turned the tide is widespread evidence that the various shady performance-enhancing shenanigans indulged in by different Russian athletes and teams were not just good old-fashioned cheating. They were policy, set at the highest levels of Russian Olympic organization. One Russian official was banned for life from any involvement with any Olympics-connected event -- which may actually help lighten the guy's workload, since he's in charge of Russia's World Cup soccer organizing committee. That organization's governing body, which has had its own shenanigan-y episodes, has said the IOC's punishments of Russia would have no impact on the World Cup.

Russia will appeal, of course, but even if it doesn't win the whole matter may be moot, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that his nation will boycott the 2018 games if it is banned from them.

In other words, you didn't fire us, we quit. The East German judge gives that one a 10.

Topsy-Turvy

Writing at The Smithsonian, Carl Abbott laments the tendency of political candidates to say that they intend to come to Washington, D.C. to "drain the swamp."

It's a phrase usually employed by outsiders and leveled against their opponents, presumably Washington insiders. If such people ever had good motives, they have been warped or stained by their time in the Washington swamp. Abbott says that the metaphor came about because of the long-held belief that the city was built on an actual swamp, which was translated into the figure of speech which we hear used today.

But the area that became the District of Columbia was never swampy, Abbott says, pointing out that George Washington, who selected it, had pretty significant experience as a land surveyor and would have been unlikely to select a poorly drained or situated site. Subsequent drainage or sewage problems stemmed from inadequate facilities for the removal of waste and excess water, rather than any inherently mucky quality of the ground. Abbott quotes several early 19th-century sources to demonstrate his thesis.

Which leaves us in the interesting state of acknowledging that labeling Washington, D. C. a swamp is inaccurate in a literal sense but dead on target as a figure of speech. In this case, the metaphor represents reality better than reality does.

Six Rings to Bankrupt Them All

Of all the lousy things that have happened to Venezuela over the last couple of decades, like Hugo Chavez and frequent visits from Sean Penn, it seems they have dodged at least one bullet: Their neighbor Brazil hosted the 2016 Olympics instead of them. And writing in USA Today, Nancy Armour sketches just how quickly the glory of the XXXI Olympiad has become a dingy Scooby-Doo set.

Armour lines up the International Olympic Committee as one of the culprits, as a culture of corruption and entitlement fuel explosive expansion of estimated Olympic venue costs. The Cato Institute's David Boaz details some of the significant cost overruns of recent games, with the most fiscally responsible edition being (of all places) the 2004 Athens games that only cost 60 percent more than the original estimates. When Greece sets the standard for your economic spending over the last 20 years, then your model has some flaws.

The system is so screwed up that even a losing bid costs money for years afterwards. Chicago was one of the candidates for the 2016 games, with then-President Barack Obama flying to Denmark in 2009 for the final IOC vote as a show of support. The IOC showed itself a little smarter than the national Democratic Party and recognized that while Mr. Obama was pretty fabulous at getting people to support himself, he was not so great a help for someone else. Chicago went out in the first round of voting, much to the surprise of CNN, which had a nice fancy countdown graphic set up and preparation for a whole morning of voting coverage.

In order to fund that bid, Chicago did things like rent its parking meters to a group of private companies. For seventy-five years. In order to lose in the first round of Olympic voting, the city gave up its share of parking revenues until the 100th anniversary of the Games of the XXIII Olympiad in 2084. The city used public funds to buy a hospital complex as a site for the Olympic Village -- land which is now valued at about 15% of the cost Chicago taxpayers laid out for it. But at least that'll be paid off 60 years before the city gets its parking meters back.

Boaz notes Anne Applebaum's suggestion that if this trend continues, then the only kinds of places that will compete to host Olympics are those where voters get to make choices like which tank will run them over during human rights demonstrations. Notably, the two remaining candidates for the 2022 Winter Olympics are China and Kazakhstan. So the choice before the IOC is to have yet another Olympics in a brutally repressive authoritarian country (the same one it did in 2008) or have it in a slightly less repressive authoritarian country but run the risk of Sacha Baron Cohen showing up every time they turn around.

My money's on Beijing. I think that, for all its thick-headed corruption, the IOC is aware that everyone already thinks it's a joke and they don't want to give them any help laughing.

A Well-Earned "Well Done!"

The International Olympic Committee gets so many things wrong, it is a pleasure to report when it gets something right. It awarded its regular "Fair Play Awards" s to American runner Abbey D'Agostino and New Zealander Nikki Hamblin.

Hamblin and D'Agostino were in a preliminary heat for the women's 5000-meter run when they became entangled with each other and fell down. D'Agostino helped Hamblin up and encouraged her to finish the race, even though the fall meant that neither of them would be likely to place high enough to advance. Hamblin in turn had to help D'Agostino, who had injured herself in the fall. The American runner collapsed again and told Hamblin to continue, only later to force herself to get up and run through her own pain to cross the finish line, nearly two full minutes after the race leader.

Earlier reports confused the Fair Play Award with the Pierre de Coubertin medal, which is not given out in every edition of the games but which also honors great sportsmanship and Olympic service. It wouldn't be the worst thing to do, to help draw some more positive attention to a Games that was very shiny with wonderful stories on the outside but possessed of some of the same rottenness on the inside as always, as well as a few new wrinkles in that department.

Interestingly, although many writers wondered in their stories about the two women's motivations, few seemed to have actually wondered that to either of the women themselves. I couldn't find anything in which Hamblin was asked that much about what caused her awesome display of honor and respect, but at least one news outlet was able to get D'Agostino to talk about why she did unto others as she did.

Update

Egyptian judoka Islam El Shehaby has been sent home by the International Olympic Committee for refusing to shake the hand of the Israeli who beat him. "Judoka" is the word that the martial art of judo uses for its practioners, the way fencing calls its competitors "fencers."

Israeli judoka Or Sasson beat El Shehaby in the 100 kg division on his way to a bronze medal (the 100 kg division is judo's heavyweight class). Judo etiquette requires the two opponents to face each other and bow after the match is over, and handshakes have become customary although they are not required. El Shehaby would at first do neither, and had to be called back to the mat more than once before he would bow as required. The Rio crowd booed him, especially when Sasson stepped forward, hand extended, and El Shehaby backed away shaking his head.

Even though the tournament is over and El Shehaby had already lost anyway, the IOC's punishment is not the complete shoulder-shrug at the incident one usually expects of them. His sport's international governing body will doubtless take a dim view of his actions, he has been evicted from the Games and he will not be able to march with his fellow Egyptian athletes in the closing ceremonies. While we might wonder if that last bit is really all that much of a punishment, we should remember that representing one's country and participating in the closing ceremonies is not the mind-numbing bore that watching them on television usually is.

(Edited to correct "judoku" to "judoka" throughout)

It's Not Easy Cleaning Green

With all of the focus on the raw sewage likely to fill the outdoor Olympic water events such as rowing, most people could be forgiven thinking that the indoor water, at least, would be OK. This isn't Venezuela, after all. You don't have to wait for your incompetent socialist president to die to unload him or her, and water still comes out of the taps when you turn them.

But turns out the folks who said Rio De Janeiro's crew weren't ready for the Olympics were probably right as regards some of the swimming and diving events too. Both the diving pool and the water polo pool have turned bright green, with the diving pool now so murky that there's no visibility. Fortunately for the competition, Olympic divers are judged by what they do above the water rather than what they do once they've entered it.

Water polo players have complained about eye irritation, and each new day brings the promise of a cleaned-up pool and a new explanation for the problem. For the record, a guy who helps run a pool cleaning company, as quoted in the New York Times, said the problem was most likely metals in the water. If the water supply has enough copper in it, then the addition of chlorine oxidizes the copper and turns the water green and murky. So essentially, the Rio Olympics are holding their diving and water polo events in rusty water. Neil Young, call your office.

The kicker is the quote from the Rio 2016 spokesman at the end of the Times story. When confronted with the string of failed promises of resolution and lame excuses, he fell back on this: "Chemistry's not an exact science." Which would be news to my high school chemistry teacher and the C+ she laid on my report card.

Public relations spokespersoning, though -- now that is by no means an exact science. When the only correct answer is "We screwed up and we don't know how," then one can choose from an endless supply of incorrect ones.

ETA Sunday: The venue managers have definitively said that someone added hydrogen peroxide to the pool by mistake, which turned the water green. Since they won't be able to clean it in time for synchronized swimming, they're pumping the water out of the pool and pumping in water from a practice pool.

Oh, and they're very embarrassed over how many times they said the problem would be cleared up the next day and it wasn't.

Faster. Higher. Stronger. And Often, Much Much Pettier

Although the rules governing international judo competitions only require that both combatants, after their matches, bow to each other in the traditional salute of the discipline, these days they often shake hands.

Unless, of course, one of them is the Egyptian Islam El Shehaby and the other one is a competitor from Israel. El Shehaby displayed the reaction many Middle Eastern athletes seem to have, but only when the Olympics requires them to be in proximity to or display basic respect for an Israeli athlete: Pure boorishness.

El Shehaby lost the bout and then doubled his filing status under the "l" word by having to be called back to the mat to bow to Israeli Or Sasson. He then went for the hat trick by refusing to meet Sasson's outstretched hand. The crowd at Rio, who had been schooled in basic decency, booed him immediately.

The International Olympic Committee opened a disciplinary commission that will meet afer the games are over and decide what, if anything, to do to El Shehaby. It's hard to say what the result will be. On the one hand, the IOC has demonstrated it doesn't much care if Israeli athletes get a little shabby treatment, nor is it overly concerned with the Games' overall history as it regards Israeli athletes. And they have the out that the sport's own rules don't require a handshake. But on the other hand, they could make themselves look decisive and tough by telling him he's been a bad boy. And since he already lost his way out of the tournament, that wouldn't really matter.

A gesture that looks tough but means nothing. That's one event where the IOC is unlikely to ever finish out of the medal round.

What Are Those Things?

Brendan Maloy, writing at Sports Illustrated, ranks Olympic mascots in the order of scariness. The scariest part of all may be that someone got paid to design some of them.

Also in Olympic news, everyone had a cheer for the "Refugee Team" of people displaced from their homelands who are competing under the Olympic flag rather than a national one. It made everyone feel good. Then we found out the Lebanese team threw a tantrum at the idea of riding to the opening ceremonies on the same bus as the Israeli team, and we were back to business as usual for this "above all the politics" event.

It's Olympic Time!

Two weeks to go until the 2016 Olympic Games begin, and they're already earning gold medals in stupidity and embarrassment:

-- The Australian team declined to move into their rooms in the athletes' Olympic Village because among the amenities the Rio de Janeiro-based games offered were not-just-low-but-no-flow toilets and accent puddles conveniently close to power cables and light switches. The mayor of Rio, demonstrating that the phrase "clueless politician" translates quite well into Portuguese (político ignorante, if you're curious), offered to get a kangaroo to jump up and down in front of the building to make them feel more at home. Because we all know that when we think of pampered athletes whining about homesickness, Australians are the first group that comes to mind.

-- The International Olympic Committee followed up a report on widespread doping among Russian athletes in recent years by choosing not to ban the entire team from the Rio games.

Instead, individual Russian athletes will have to pinky swear to their individual sport governing bodies that their strength, speed and skill come from good food, clean living, taking their vitamins and saying their prayers. Actually the IOC said that each sport will determine which Russian atheletes may compete and outlined the criteria to be used for that determination -- reminding the sport federations that previous clean tests should not by themselves be considered enough proof of cleanliness.

Some folks said that the Aug. 5 opening date means there will not be nearly enough time to complete this more rigorous scrutiny, but the International Tennis Federation proved them wrong by clearing all eight Russian tennis players just several hours after the IOC announcement based on their previous history of clean tests.

Cha-Ching!

Yep, winning those Olympic Games is a prize like no other!