3xl here. As you might guess from my nom de plume, athletic endeavor is not the strongest point in my impressive resume of talents. I have had honorable mention in stair climbing, in the two flight category, and have been known to smash some records(and furniture) in the two feet dive to the couch. It should also be made known that no one, but no one has ever beaten me in the strength event of start the lawn mower, though it has to be admitted, under my truth in blogging rules, that the field is somewhat sparse and the grass somewhat long...and the 4 passions are only girls anyway :-).
I, like many couch athletes, was watching the spectacular and wonderful games that are occurring in the Middle Kingdom over these next few weeks and I was struck by many things and many questions.
I mused on whether the opening event had to be quite so long and so lavish, breathtaking though it was? I heard though that China had lost 25% of the nation's industrial output to pay for the games and had closed factories to clean the air around the stadiums, so I guess they want their money's worth and 25% is quite some "bang" for buck.
I wondered how many of the drummers, had epileptic episodes as the strobes on their drums flashed on and off canceling their subscription to their brain's alpha waves?
What kind of harness rash do you get when you fly through the air for twenty minutes.
What kind of pins and needles do you get, as the harness drops your circulation to the level of the Alabama corn growers association weekly!
Did the men under the boxes going up and down so wonderfully, really have no other help, or was their something under their feet that jabbed them when they had to lift up their boxes.
One central imponderable for me was how they ever found Sarah Brightman, and then got her to sing in Chinese, on top of a magic lantern with people running around it. Wow symbolism!!
Last, but not least, when the legendary Chinese gymnast began his run around the top of the stadium to light the torch, did you gasp when his harness tilted giving the impression that he was about to fall a very long way. I perceived that it was not going to be a good Chinese laundry moment for Mrs legendary Chinese gymnast when he got home, but no doubt he is made of tougher stuff then 3xl.
Impressive stuff, but anyone who watches the grand cinema of China would have seen many similarly impressive things, so it should not surprise us that China can put on a good show in more ways than one. When asked about the sheer scale of the production the producer said rather matter of factly, "well we have the people...: Oh yes they do.
Of course it would not be an eastern production with out some yin and some yang to go round?Yes contrasts are ever with us, and if strong enough, oft provoke a reaction in us.
The Olympics is about unity, and "brotherhood of man understanding," a humanistic effort to bring people together using the medium of sport. All the while war continues to rage in the Caucasus, Iraq, Afghanistan and on.
Along with the highest personal endeavor in sports there also comes national pride and tribalism, the desire to do your best but not just for yourself and for man but for your tribe and clan and country.
Michael Phelps appears to be very likable, level headed even gauche young man who has had enormous pressure put on him to perform and do well. All the talk is of the eight gold medals he could win breaking the record of the other guy who got seven, swimming, and I am old enough to remember watching that.
It just boggles my mind the amount of dedication and hard work that goes in to the performances that we see played out for glory or shame, in just a few short minutes, and then it is over. The Olympic mantra is that even to compete is a great honor and winning is not the main thing. Truly. it is a great honor to even be present to compete as the best and the brightest of each country duke it out with their other nation counterparts. However it is clear that being there is not going to cut it for many of the athletes who have poured their time, money , careers, lives and relationships into their sport and are not wanting to leave without some kind of metal gong around their necks. They truly put the sin in single minded and show clearly what or who, their number one priority is.
Then, by contrast again, you hear of one Polish athlete who sold her gold medal for $82,000 to donate it to children's cancer, and she only had one not seven. She is no fool who gives up that which she can not keep to gain that which she will never lose( as a certain one said before giving up that which was most precious to him). I salute her as a hero and someone who gave, whatever her motivation for that which she believed in. Contrasts, tribalism and values.
I was brought up in a small village in England. Our neighboring village was called Adlington, so imagine my pride in seeing that a UK swimmer called Adlington took a gold medal in swimming from a US favorite hopeful and another UK swimmer came third. A shock result.
Do not be perturbed however dear readers by this sudden display of old country nationalism, I am rooting for the US never fear. So to show off my new country pride, let me finish this segment, with something that anyone on this side of the Atlantic could not help but enjoy.
It is with great pleasure and with not a little schadenfreude and sang froid to use a fitting cultural reference, that I note the humbling of the team that brought us arrogance and le trash talk, the French relay swim team. They were favorites, they were world record holders, they were the team that everyone had to beat, but they could not resist a little jab at the US and a display of, how you say, the pomme fritte on the shoulder that makes us Europeans so endearing, when we say things that make us sound like has beens glorying in our ancient splendor.
Leave it to the French to put their pied in their bouche and say we came here to crush the Americans, I mean, do we need lessons in bombast, pomposity,jingoism,patriotism, I don't think so, I think we have that covered thanks.
Thus it was with contrasting delight I watched the French, all bluster and bellicosity, beaten by a finger tip in the last stretch by the men they were going to crush, in a World Record time, that smashed the French's previous record by four seconds. We were thus treated with a few of those(courtesy of the French), well what do you know moments, as it appeared that once again we did not know much of even what we knew.... As it were.
So 3xl being the blogger he is could not resist compiling a few aphoristic musings and lessons here for us, based on these events and happenings, in the hope that they will be of some benefit, nay amusement to you all.
Firstly,if you are the best you do not need to brag about it, because if you are not we will soon find out, and if you are, we will know already.
Secondly, and very important to me....The best do not always win.
(This was a source of comfort for me, both times I won.)
If you have a chip(french /freedom fry let the reader understand) on your shoulder, fry it in your own pan, and deal with it graciously and internally, rather than displaying it openly. If you do not, you are allowing it to subject you to more reasons to feel bad about yourself, when the next inevitable embarrassment occurs.
Never give up till it is finished, and never assume you have succeeded until you have. Some defeats turn around into glorious victories in 8 hundredths of a second and that last stretch may do it. Some victories however, go the same way.
A win by a finger tip is the same as a win by a length, so if you seem behind at the moment remember that it can all change, and if winning is important to you, then it is all that matters.
I know that a humble frenchman is an oxymoron, but we Brits have enough Breton in us to kind of love them for that anyway, so Vive la France and God Bless Americans and rule the waves Britannia, even if only a few hundred metres of them.
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