Olympic Thoughts

One of the oddest things I saw happened on the first day, I still in shock just cause I can't imagine it ever happening in the US.
This Chinese air rifle athlete I guess was supposed to win the competition and didn't even get a medal. After she was inconsolable. There might not be crying in baseball, but there is indeed in 10m air pistol shooting. It wasn't strange that she was crying, and talking about how she felt that she let down her country, didn't live up to her expectations, etc. What floored me was that at the end of the interview the interviewer gave her a long hug, as if to say it is alright and that the chinese people know she tried her hardest.
Maybe I am jaded, but I just can't imagine an interviewer consoling an athlete after a loss. I can imagine the athlete going for it with someone like Erin Andrews or Rachel Nichols, but not the other way around. When I picture interviewer-interviewee interactions, I think of Jim Gray telling saying to Pete Rose "When are you going to admit that you bet on baseball".


in other news. I loved the US vs. China game

Everytime Yao touched the ball the chinese announcers would go wild as if he just hit a game winning three. I'm talking about if he caught a pass in the post they used every superlative they knew.

I'm glad we dropped 100 on China. My students still call US basketball "the Dream Team", if China wasn't going to win, the US might as well have appeased their fans.

Craziest thing I heard all night though, I was watching the Chinese TV English Station and this announcer is explaining how China showed great skill and were extremely competitive. I'm still trying to figure out who he was trying to convince. They lost by 30 some points, that isn't competitive. Was he trying to give Chinese people pointers on what to say to Foreigners when they talk about the game? (I always thought the Chinese didn't want to lose face) Is this a case of nothing be wrong with China on government television?

In 30 years, probably sooner actually, China is going to have a squad, then talk to me about skill.


I miss American Coverage. There is way too much about the Chinese. That came out the wrong way. Obviously I'm in China and they are going to show the events that the Chinese team are in, if I were in America the coverage would be skewed accordingly. what I really mean to say is I want to see some Olympic coverage, not just highlights of the Chinese winning medals.

Granted this complaint is a result of coverage on the first two days, which didn't have much to show or much in the way of exciting sports. I'm happy that the little 48kg weightlifting chinese girl won the first gold medal for China, but I saw her highlights atleast 100 that night, at one point they even cut away from live swimming to show highlights of her winning, while on the other olympic channels they were interviewing her parents, and having her on talk shows.

This coverage repeated itself the next day with the Chinese Archery team, their gold and their highlights.

Some other events must have have been taking place, how about some other highlights. I'm just happy that they like swimming here, so they are actually showing Phelps.

They have beeb showing a lot of US volleyball as well, but I don't think it has anything to do with the volleyball players father being killed, more to do with the fact that the american coach is Chinese.
Not surprisingly their has been no coverage on the news of the killing. Obviously an isolated incident and has nothing to do with the Olympics, but isn’t it a bit worrisome that anyone can get into a tourist site and so close to the Olympic sites with a weapon.

Through informal research done in my english classes it seems my Chinese students would prefer China to win the most gold medals over winning the most medals. Winning Golds seems to be the way the chinese measure their success. the Chinese list themselves first on the medal count because they have the most gold medals even though the USA has more total medals.

Why don’t we have a handball team.

I'm sure the chinese pushed hard for synchronized diving to become part of the Olympics, I'm convinced its only here so the Chinese can bad their medal count.
They are already great divers, plus they have the added advantage of all being the same size.