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Future of the Olympics


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So two “villains” of the games are an eighteen year old and a fifteen year old,  both of whom can be said are tools of authoritarian regimes in some way.  And the use of them reflects the way way those regimes try to pose and flex for the outside world. 
 

One— a glittering world of possibilities and riches and a real rival to the teetering but dominant model of social organization. Everything is possible, so long as you don’t step out of line, so long as you keep yourself in your “box.” Athletes are for sports. Communist leaders are for governing. Uyghurs are for sterilizing and putting in concentration camps.  None of them have anything to do with the other, why would they? Agree to that, and the future for you is bright.

The other— thuggery and rule flouting. An open— even in your face lack of concern for consequences or people.  A regime that seems to relish criticism, that wants to win at any cost, and that will sacrifice anything to achieve that goal.  Winning with honor doesn’t bring honor— just winning, and it’s even better if you cheat and everyone knows it. This shows you are strong and no one can stop you. As Putin governs, so Russia competes.

The first— more threatening and scary in the long term, precisely because the of the velvet glove. The second— more emotionally visceral.

Shit is broken, yo.  Time to blow it up and start again. 

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Oh yeah, and on the skater— time for a lower age limit in the Olympics.  It’s rare but possible to be elite in other sports at 15 (Katie Ledecky 2012) but you should not be at your absolute prime as an athlete at 15. If your prime athletes are 15-17 years old, change the standards so they aren’t so creepy and exploitative. 

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On 2/10/2022 at 11:11 AM, YChang said:

As a Chinese American, I don't like it. I think she could have made money here too. But I also don't think it's anything nefarious what Gu's doing. I think she's just capitalizing on her stardom to make as much money as possible. Window is pretty short typically for Olympic athletes.

She does invite tons of criticism and I think some of y'all feel a lot stronger about this because she's of Chinese descent. And it's fucking China (fuck them). And that's ok, we all have our built-in biases. But I wonder if some of y'all would be as vigorous in your criticism if she was Scandinavian descent and just won a gold for Norway. 

Much of this depends on the person watching. I had a different opinion before watching the event than after watching it. The Americans pretty much sucked except for her. She is attractive and very SoCal and is the best by a pretty far margin. It sucked watching her win while the other Americans pretty much sucked. It felt like watching America win but handing the medal to China - and yes, fuck China for Covid, for a bunch of human rights violations, for their overtaking of everything in the South China Sea Asia and pretty much all of Asia, for their environmental record, and for their stealing of IP.

With all that said, I get why she did it. It makes a lot of sense for her. I'm not confident that she made the right move as she stood to make a lot of money on endorsements from US companies. I think companies in the US deserve a lot of blowback if they use her as a spokesperson now.

And this whole quarrel made me re-evaluate my opinion on the Olympics. I think in most individual events people compete more for themselves than for their country. When I'm racing, I'm trying to beat the person next to me. I'm not thinking about country. Country only comes up when the national anthem is played and I feel my country's love for me and am happy that I made them proud. But in the race itself, it is all about me. So as a non-competitor, it makes me wonder when nationality came into play in the Olympics. It makes sense for team sports and it definitely brings many more eyes to televisions across the world. In the end though, it is just a bunch of athletes trying to be the best that they can be.

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Oh yeah, and on the skater— time for a lower age limit in the Olympics.  It’s rare but possible to be elite in other sports at 15 (Katie Ledecky 2012) but you should not be at your absolute prime as an athlete at 15. If your prime athletes are 15-17 years old, change the standards so they aren’t so creepy and exploitative. 

That skater is just the latest in a LONG list of Russian skaters from Eteri (Russian coach) that have been used, abused, and thrown away.

She’s a monster.

She grabs potential talent around the ages of 8-10 and trains them with HORRIBLE technique that destroys their bodies. The training she uses to get those girls to achieve quads is terrible. She forces them to be on all liquid diets and does things (puberty blockers) to maintain prepubescent bodies and dangerous weights so they can do the quads.

Notice how none of the recent Russian “champions” last past one Olympics?

That’s because their jumping technique (pulling an almost full rotation prior to leaving the ice) absolutely wrecks their hips and backs.

They win Worlds and gold medals at 15-16. Then they’re 18/19/20 they’re too heavy and lose their jumping technique due to their maturing bodies and change in their center of gravity and completely finished and practically crippled four years later.

She should be banned from the sport.

And the bottom line - if they’re too young to understand the rules and understand what “supplements” she’s taking, she’s too young to compete against other athletes that do understand.

The ISU skating shares some blame for the scoring system rewarding jumps for the sake of jumps with no regard for artistry or technique.

The age limit should be raised to 18 and Eteri should be banned from the sport.

Google Eteri Tutberidze and read about the horrors she inflicts on children.

https://slate.com/culture/2022/02/kamila-valieva-coach-eteri-tutberidze-abuse-russia-doping.html

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Abusive monstrous bitch.
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31 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Don’t read if you don’t want the results spoiled.

This bitch (the coach) needs an ass kicking.
 

Thomas Bach can get fucked. “Oh, how awful it is that the ROC coach was mean. You know they just built a whole-ass fake wall and testing facility to get away with drug tests, but now that they were mean on TV to a teenager I am worried.”

This dude has been a total enabler from Peng Shui to Beijing to the ROC.  

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46 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Thomas Bach can get fucked. “Oh, how awful it is that the ROC coach was mean. You know they just built a whole-ass fake wall and testing facility to get away with drug tests, but now that they were mean on TV to a teenager I am worried.”

This dude has been a total enabler from Peng Shui to Beijing to the ROC.  

 

31 minutes ago, utee94 said:

It was completely within the IOC's power to ban Russia.  Like, for real, not what they actually did, which was nothing.

It's as much their fault that it played out this way.

Yes yes yes. 

https://www.thestar.com/sports/olympics/opinion/2022/02/17/ioc-president-thomas-bachs-tough-talk-on-kamila-valieva-controversy-was-galling.html

Money quote:

Quote

Beneath that headline, you had to marvel at Bach’s gall. The 68-year-old German was a driving force in making sure Russia never missed a Games after running the largest modern-day state-sponsored doping program in history; it was a failure of Russia’s anti-doping agency, RUSADA, that ensured Valieva’s test was not processed before she was already at the Olympics. Bach was a driving force in rearranging his alphabet soup of CAS (whose president is IOC made man John Coates), WADA (which has been gradually co-opted for years) and the International Testing Agency, which couldn’t be called the Independent Testing Agency because a Swiss court ruled it was not independent.

The IOC had a big role in this mess.

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