A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Beijing

Actually, a couple funny things.

1) As noted in a previous post, 12 year-old girls on a world stage don't constitute something that I can really laugh at anymore. It just feels (too) mean. Particularly in light of that fact, though, there's something pretty amusing about the alleged age scandal. What kind of "sport" is it an advantage to be younger? Can you imagine if NFL teams were trying to sneak as 15 year-olds onto their rosters? Or how about a 12 year old kid standing in to face a Brad Lidge slider? Really (and I actually mean this), it's a shame for the people involved (assuming innocence, of course), but you have to admit it's good entertainment, right?

2) It's not funny at all to me, but the actions of certain Americans is embarrassing to me. Within a day or two, we had our baseball team's manager (seriously-- isn't the manager the one who's supposed to bring maturity and all that?) accusing an opponent of throwing at his guy's head (which, under the circumstances, would have been ludicrous) and a(nother) boxer complaining about the scoring (in fairness [pun intended], Olympic boxing has been as plauged by shady scoring as, well, pro boxing). I understand disappointment, but especially in the Olympics, whatever happened to representing your country first and foremost?

3) Lucky for us, there's Cuban tae-kwon-do. Apparently I can't link to the video due to copywright laws, but after being disqualified a dude kicked the ref (who, apparently, is Sweedish, no less) in the face. And it really does take the gold for poor sportsmanship . . . but. But isn't kicking people in the face pretty much the whole point of the event? So while we all (and myself too, I guess) rush to vilify this as the worst Olympic action of all time, it was a mere misapplication of the very skill that he was intending to be rewarded for. Now obviously it's important to kick the right dude, no question, but do you see what I'm getting at? It's just kind of ironic, right?

Almost as rich is the reaction of the guy who won. He said that obviously the Cuban dude couldn't go on and his foot (toe? whatever) was broken. In light of the fact that his obviously incapacitated opponent got up and popped a dude in the melon, I'm not sure his argument is watertight.

4) Speaking of sportmanship, it's sad how often doping comes up, and how often we (or "I" at least) wonder about it. Dude looked yoked? I wonder. Girl built like a dude? I wonder again. With medals being stripped retroactively (much like universities "vacating" wins and championships and what not [*cough* USC *cough*]) and all that's going on, do you feel like you're always going to be waiting for another ball to drop?

5) Swimming medals are, to a degree, bogus. Phelps is obviously the greatest swimmer alive today, but imagine if, for instance, basketball gave out medals for 5-on-5, 3-on-3, 1-on-1, free-throw shooting, three-point shooting, ball handling skills, and slam dunk competitions? The point is that, no matter how dominant one might be on the hardwood, there's only one medal available, and so there's something artificial about even having the opportunity to win 8 medals in a sinlge sport. That said, I think it's hilarious that one dude has more gold medals than, say, Italy, Canada, or Spain. He has more total medals than, for instance, the Czech Republic or North Korea. I just think it's funny.