The South Korean Ryu Seung Min kicked the ass of Austria’s Chen Weixing in a brutal(ly) boring battle for king of pong. I’m trying to decide if this is more entertaining that watching a 20 year old Belarusian put 444 pounds above his head without, literally, busting a gut. Yee hah! SK just won, bronze. This is so not the table tennis that we used to while away many teenage hours with. It looks like they serve with their cheek. The table is the size of a pop tart and now, unbelievably, they are playing doubles.
The whole Olympics hype has pretty much ruined the spectacle for me. It’s become too political and the gamesmanship is more about cheating that being the fastest. Not that many have been kicked out but one of them who did was someone who shoots at targets. Why does he need to get cranked up on steroids? Well, of course, he doesn’t. He needs to crank down so he takes something for that but he won’t be taking home the medal he won.
And whaddup with the Chinese sending in kindergarteners and pretending they are sixteen but there doesn’t seem to be a big whup about it because the hosts are a little huffy over any hint of impropriety on their watch? Though I haven’t watched that much besides really cool stuff like sailing and Siamese beach volley ball, I have caught a lot of highlights on the news and so I actually know who Michael Phelps is and the other swimmer, Lezak (sp?) who saved Phelps from only a tie with Mark Spitz.
With the medal count 79 for the US and 77 for China you would think that would spell second place but the Chinoise have more gold, 18 more. What is not known in this equation is how to weight the value of the individual sport. Surely, tiddly winks does not have the heft of putting a record smashing 569 pounds over your own head. And Shawn Johnson’s gold can’t compare to ladies archery or dancing in a swimming pool. So if the Sino set says “but we have more points because our golds are worth more than your collective silvers and bronzes,” we can counter by pulling our troops out of Iraq and lining them up on the Siberian border. Let the games end!
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Have you ever actually tried dancing in a swimming pool? It's much, much harder than it looks on TV. That being said, a medal is a medal is a medal. No matter the niche, the winner has to whip the best the world has to offer. I'd bet the gold-medal winning water ballerina could kick our collective ass at archery, ping pong or thumb wresting. These kids kick are all business. Even the 34-year-old Russian diver, who neither qualifies for kid status nor looks like one who would.
ReplyDeleteGo USA!