Monday, August 18, 2008
The nation that wins the most gold medals
The nation that wins the most gold medals is the greatest nation in the world.
No, the nation that wins the most overall medals is the greatest nation is the world.
It's like half the world's track & field athletes train at American colleges. Brazil exports excess beach volleyball players. Baseball & softball are being elminated because Americans dominate, but you think our professional men's basketball Dream Teams will ever lose another game now that they have a good attitude? Not while there's always a world superstar like Kobe Bryant selling tickets. If we can field a world class women's soccer team, I think Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, China, & Canada could eventually become competitive in softball. Still, when you outscore opponents 53-1 so far, that is dominant. Like they say, good pitching beats good hitting. Our softball team is a Dream Team. So let them be like the basketball team, like the "amateur Soviet Union hockey team used to be, the world gold standard. Eventually there will be a "Miracle On the Diamond."
***
I don't trust sports with scoring by committee. Maybe I never got over the egregiously bad judging in some Cold war era Olympic events when I was a kid. Had to wait until 1984 for Mary Lou Retton, & the Commies boycotted that one (except Romania. a depressing place even for athletes who were Heroes of the Revolution), & Mary Lou was a teenage wingnut & not so easy to adore as Nadia. But the tiebreaker in gymnastics is dumb. Perfection is banished, which for some reason insults the poet in me. They can't give out two Gold medals like in other sports, so they whittle down the size of the committee until the tie is broken. Anyway, we all know the Chinese are lying about the ages of their female gymnasts. I've read that some of them are 13. That seems on the high side. They look the third class that comes on stage at Miss Pat's dance recital, which would put them at about 11.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
No, the nation that wins the most overall medals is the greatest nation is the world.
It's like half the world's track & field athletes train at American colleges. Brazil exports excess beach volleyball players. Baseball & softball are being elminated because Americans dominate, but you think our professional men's basketball Dream Teams will ever lose another game now that they have a good attitude? Not while there's always a world superstar like Kobe Bryant selling tickets. If we can field a world class women's soccer team, I think Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, China, & Canada could eventually become competitive in softball. Still, when you outscore opponents 53-1 so far, that is dominant. Like they say, good pitching beats good hitting. Our softball team is a Dream Team. So let them be like the basketball team, like the "amateur Soviet Union hockey team used to be, the world gold standard. Eventually there will be a "Miracle On the Diamond."
***
I don't trust sports with scoring by committee. Maybe I never got over the egregiously bad judging in some Cold war era Olympic events when I was a kid. Had to wait until 1984 for Mary Lou Retton, & the Commies boycotted that one (except Romania. a depressing place even for athletes who were Heroes of the Revolution), & Mary Lou was a teenage wingnut & not so easy to adore as Nadia. But the tiebreaker in gymnastics is dumb. Perfection is banished, which for some reason insults the poet in me. They can't give out two Gold medals like in other sports, so they whittle down the size of the committee until the tie is broken. Anyway, we all know the Chinese are lying about the ages of their female gymnasts. I've read that some of them are 13. That seems on the high side. They look the third class that comes on stage at Miss Pat's dance recital, which would put them at about 11.
Labels: sports
