Tokyo Olympics

Like a thief leaving a calling card, the IOC leaves these rings at the site where they rob from the taxpayers, oftentimes alongside a pile of rubble that formerly hosted some sporting event. // photo by Ryunosuke Kikuno

I think it's pretty safe to say that this year's Olympics was a pretty big dud. NBC's Olympic ratings certainly agree.

Even before the Olympics was close to starting, idiotic decisions like barring Sha'Carri Richardson from competing due to some pot consumption already put a damper on the mood. She has the personality and the style to bring some spark to a sideline sport and the governing body of old men decide to enforce an idiotic rule? Perhaps those old men need to smoke some pot themselves and mellow out.

Then as Coronavirus cases rose in Japan, people began calling for the games to be canceled, as the organizers eventually decide to forbid spectators from populating the stands. But of course, they weren't completely serious about that, as foreign "dignitaries" dotted the seats of the opening ceremonies. Because, you know, these people that spend their lives oppressing people deserve special treatment over us lowly commoners.

At least there was some comedic relief as China cried over the accurate map of China displayed by NBC during the opening ceremonies because it didn't include Taiwan or the South China Sea. Chinese officials claimed that it "hurt the dignity and emotions of the Chinese people." Holy shit, move over woke college students, you're abjectly failing at playing victim. I think we've found the real snowflakes!

The biggest news, by far in the early stages, was Simone Biles's inability to get her mind around what she was trying to do. All of a sudden, the phrase "mental health" suddenly became the big buzzword, citing the gymnastics phrase, the "twisties". I'm not a gymnast, myself, but I can understand how the mind can disconnect from the task at hand. Is that "mental health"? It seems like a really low threshold for a term typically reserved for chronic depression and schizophrenia among other persistently dangerous conditions inherent to existence. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, assholes like Charlie Kirk called Biles "a selfish sociopath" and "a shame to the country". That's funny. I don't remember Charlie Kirk winning any medals. All he's done is make a bunch of shitty videos that show up in my feed because the idiotic YouTube algorithm politically inept people at Google came up with can't tell the difference between conservatism and libertarianism.

I had, myself, initially criticized Biles for dropping out of the team event, not because of some misplaced sense of nationalism or anything, but rather that she gave her word to the team that she would compete in it. But I didn't broadcast that to the world or call her names. And that was before I understood how gymnastics worked (I only barely watch it every four years). I had thought her score would get blanked, bringing the score down for the four-person team 25%. Rather, it turned out that any three gymnasts of four on the team can perform in each event. Given Biles's performance, it probably was a higher probability that someone else would score higher on all events so it may have actually increased the score. Despite the power play all the other teams had, Team USA still came in silver, a testament to the women on the team. Nevertheless, if anyone is the undisputed best at what they do in the history of mankind, then maybe that person can call Biles an embarrassment without looking like a complete fool. Sorry, Kirk. That's not you. Nor is it pretty much anybody else in the world.

I also wonder what may have transpired if Biles's family and friends were allowed to attend. Would it have calmed her nerves? Would it have helped her mind reconnect? Would the support make her land the flips? If only her family were people of much worse character, they could have been hypocritical politicians and gotten themselves into the stands.

In that same vein, how many families lost out on the opportunity to celebrate with their Olympian loved one? To console those that come in the dreaded fourth place? How many elder family members won't be able to make it another three years to the next Olympics, if the athlete can even make the team next Olympics? How many of them will take that regret to their deathbeds? Everything we do in life comes with a risk. Every action we take has a value we chase. Nobody knows that ratio except that person. If your only purpose in life is to have a beating heart, then you go ahead and stay home and completely isolate yourself. Other people realize there is more to life than that. Your value to risk ratio is not the same as the next person over and you should not be able to dictate that to someone else.

In further proof that politics ruins everything, some athletes utilized the stage for political protests. They could have protested something important like how the US is committing genocide in Yemen, or how China is stuffing Uighurs in concentration camps. They can't do the former because they would have to admit their hero Barack Obama funded mass genocide to "appease the Saudis" and they can't do the latter because it would piss off many of their corporate sponsors. No, instead of taking any risk whatsoever to rally for people actually being oppressed in a brutal fashion, they instead protested a woke agenda that largely has no pushback from the establishment and is fundamentally agreed to by everyone while prescribing a fix that would serve more to be counterproductive than to help their goals. It appears to be lost on them that their stance is endorsed by the major corporations, political establishment, and the media establishment. It's almost as if the entrenched powers love to utilize useful idiots to push these narratives that distract from the real problems the US government is creating. They could protest genocide and ethnic cleansing, both very real problems, but they instead chase a mythical issue, helping neutralize the opposition to the former. I don't criticize people for criticizing the country like conservatives do. I criticize this country all the time. We should all want our country to improve. What I have a problem with is people who have little understanding of how the power structure works and utilizing their platform to counterproductively push the power brokers into having more power to exert more of their evil on the world. Olympic athletes would do well to gain more than a superficial understanding of what they protest.

In more uplifting parts of the games, Hong Kong won six medals, including gold in fencing. This is double the amount of medals Hong Kong has won in all of their previous Olympics combined! It has been wonderful to see Hong Kong be able to finally cheer for something again.

In similarly uplifting news, Taiwan's badminton team beat China for gold! Two countries fought each other and the better country won. One of the players posted on Facebook that the gold medal was "Dedicated to my country, Taiwan." That's grade-A trolling, right there. Eat it, China.

Speaking of China, they select hundreds of thousands of children for Olympic sports, as early as four years of age. Just like high school basketball players looking to join the NBA, the vast majority will fail. However, in China, these prospective Olympic athletes will often be left without proper education, instead focusing solely on their sport. These athletes, if they never make the cut, or even end up winning then falling out of favor, will often become destitute, with little to no skills for the workplace. It is unclear to me if parents can turn down the state's decision to place them in the athletics program, but if they can, I imagine it would negatively impact their social credit score at a minimum. There have been stories about those that have won in the Olympics being forbidden to quit the sport. So every time China is on the podium is a time for reflection on the human cost of these medals.

Track and Field, the only Olympic event that I actually care about, was a massive disappointment for Team USA, particularly on the men's side and, somewhat, for my Ducks. The biggest disappointment, of course, was the men's 4x100 failing to even make the finals. Even when I, someone who has little understanding of the sport's intricacies, looked at the start list before the race and exclaimed "Why the hell is Cravon Gillespie anchoring"? I love him as a Duck, but even though he has a faster time than most people on the other teams, he was the slowest in the Trials, though not by much, and personally, seemed like his head wasn't really in it, as he seemed to take his selection to the relays as a consolation prize instead of being excited to be there, like Micah Williams. He didn't seem to give an effort to lean at the end and lost positioning, but the botched second handoff was what made a sure spot in the finals a close race. About practicing, the runners said there was very little of it, for an event that requires the most team practice of all the events. That's all the team should have been doing since the Trials ended. Carl Lewis even called the showing "a clown show."

Grant Holloway, the runaway favorite for the 110 hurdles, placed silver. My boy, Devon Allen, finished in the dreaded 4th place slot, one better than he did in Rio. Matthew Centrowitz, the Rio gold medalist in the 1500, ran an uncharacteristically poor race and didn't qualify for the finals. Cole Hocker, however, the 19-year-old Duck, shockingly came in 6th in the final on a fast pace in a loaded field, a largely overlooked glimmer for the future. Many didn't think Hocker would even make the team. Norman didn't medal. Lyles finished lower than expected. Galen Rupp dropped back to 8th after a strong start in the marathon. In fact, the entire men's track team failed to garner a gold medal until the end at the 4x400 relay. The only real bright spot was that Ryan Crouser strung together perhaps the most impressive series of shot puts in the history of the sport. Unfortunately, he decided to go be a Texas Longhorn instead of following in his family's footsteps at Oregon.

The women did much better. Sydney McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammad ran brilliant races in the 400m hurdles, as expected. Athing Mu torched the field as expected in the 800m while the Duck, Raevyn Rogers, tore up the track in a fierce kick to finish third. Jenna Prandini and English Gardner ran great legs in the 4x100 to haul in silver for the US. No one was going to beat Jamaica in that race without a baton hitting the ground. Even if Sha'Carri Richardson was there, it's unlikely they could have gotten it done, though they may not have swept the 100m had she been there.

Nevertheless, despite the US performance, athletes put on an impressive show. Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya absolutely dominated the marathon. Sifan Hassan, a Dutch refugee from Ethiopia, had an unreal performance, winning gold in both the 5k and 10k, along with a bronze in the 1500m.

On top of it all, NBC's coverage was abysmal. Events were terribly fragmented, the television schedules didn't really broadcast what events were shown live where. When they showed a replay on YouTube, you had the pleasure of sitting through a full-length ad to get a 3:30 race chopped down and edited to 2:30, in a race you already knew who won because they thought including spoilers in the title was a good decision. On-Demand was a mess (at least for Sling) and the Peacock app was a nightmare to navigate.

I'm sure in the back of everyone's minds was this: How much money, exactly, did Japan lose? With no butts in the seats come no money from tickets. By all indications, Japanese taxpayers lost billions of dollars in revenue with costs not exactly easing up. The Olympics have famously and consistently lost money for host cities. Montreal held massive debt for the games that took decades to pay off and Greece fell into a debt crisis after hosting the Olympics in Athens, though really, they were quickly barreling toward that direction anyway. 

The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles was unique in that it actually made money. Also unique was its bidding process. Off the heels of the Montreal disaster, Los Angeles was the only city with a final bid. The politicians actually smartly, whether for the right reasons or not, wanted nothing to do with the bid. A sports entrepreneur, Peter Ueberroth, spearheaded the bidding for the Olympic games for Los Angeles, wooing private investors. Due to the lack of other bids, they were able to utilize existing venues for nearly every event, keeping construction costs extremely low, unlike every other bid from governmental agencies that spam out debt-based dollars to fund extravagant stadiums to satiate politicians' inflated egos and stick the taxpayers with the bill. It was held up as a model for the future of the Olympics.

Unfortunately, the profit stemming from this Olympics brought governments back into the fold, blinded by dollar signs in their eyes and led astray by the illusion of grandeur. They were enticed by the model, but completely threw away everything that made the model actually work, as one would expect from government agencies. Thankfully, after disastrous cost overruns and crumbling single-use infrastructure (and they dare complain about "single-use" plastic bags?) every four years, cities have started turning away from the Olympics yet again. 

When the Olympics returns to Los Angeles in 2028, it looks like they will be doing a similar model to 1984 (no, not that 1984...hopefully). Perhaps they will actually do okay financially again, and then we can watch governments across the world excitedly sink their citizens into ever more debt over the Olympics for the following four decades.