One Last Olympic Controversy

As the Olympics draw to a close, we've had more controversy around Caster Semenya, the South African runner. She's widely believed to have some sort of intersex condition, which may help her athletic ability.

People always seem to have a fit when presented with this case, as they can't wrap their heads around the idea of a person who doesn't fit clearly in either gender. The fact is that there are a number of ways to explain this. For instance, there is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, where a person's body is genetically and internally male, but externally female. This isn't even the first time the issue has come up in the Olympics. It's a difficult subject, since it brings up the Olympics' unfortunate history of gender testing. Yes, they once physically inspected female athletes to determine that they were, in fact, female. That goes beyond a desire for fairness, and into paranoia.

Whatever the exact cause, Semenya's condition probably gives her an advantage over most women. You might be quick to call it an unfair advantage, since extra injections of testosterone are one of the performance-enhancing substances they test for. But, is there really a problem of fairness here? After all, most athletes have some sort of genetic advantage; hers is merely an easily-quantified advantage. And that's where this gets awkward, because we have to confront the question of what exactly sports are supposed to be measuring. We often kid ourselves that it's a competition of who had the most dedication, who's practiced the most, or that old cliché, who wants it more. And those things do contribute, but really we're often just running one person's genes against another.

But then we also have to ask the question of what exactly is the purpose of separate competitions for women. If we're just going to concede that sport can be a simple measure of genetics, you could argue that having a Y chromosome is just one of those physical advantages. Taking that argument to its extreme, we wouldn't have divisions for gender at all. But that isn't a situation we want. So you could argue that if we're going to have separate competitions for women, then they should be open only to people who have a similar physical starting-point. For that reason, we should probably make the gender-distinction based less on how society defines gender and more on the physical capabilities. That's more of a scientific question, which will take a while to sort out.

In Your Dreams Team

Sports can be entertaining, in providing action, intrigue or suspense, but the emotional content comes from living vicariously through your favourite athletes or teams. You share in their experience of accomplishment or disappointment, based on their success or failure.  It's a silly thing to do,  but it's enjoyable, and I think it's not harmful, as long as it's done in moderation.  For instance today I feel good,  because I'm writing this after seeing my Blue Jays win.  In psychology, they call this Basking in Reflected Glory.

And this is why I think that one of the basic rules of sports fandom is that you have to pick a favourite and stick with him/her/them through thick and thin. Cherry-picking the best competitors of the era is a way of childishly trying to avoid the negatives of life.  That's why I've always looked down on:

• Yankees fans with no connection to New York,  
• people who get into European soccer and decide to support Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus etc. 
• anyone wearing clothing of a winning team based on the other side of the continent. 

But at least those fans follow the basic premise of living vicariously.  What I don't get at all are the fans that Bask in Reflected Glory of competitors they aren't even cheering for.  I first noticed the phenomena in high school when Michael Jordan was reaching his prime. Many of my classmates seemed to draw tremendous emotional energy from seeing his successes.  Keep in mind that this is small-town Ontario, so we not only had no connection to Chicago, but little connection to basketball.

But nevertheless, here were these teenagers getting pumped up watching a guy they didn't know dominate a sport they didn't care about. From time to time I still see it happen, say with interviewers more concerned with palling-around with the athletes they interview, or commentators who seem to get untold joy from gushing about the opposing team's star.

The reason I'm bringing this up is to give a warning to my fellow Canadians: There's basically no way a non-American can cheer for the US men's basketball team without sounding like an asshole. It's difficult enough for an American; but at least they can claim a connection. Sure, it may sound arrogant to the rest of us, but Americans do have as much right as anyone to cheer for their athletes.  Though if they’re going to be polite about it, they should follow up any boasts by emphasizing that they’d rather have a silver and no Trump.

For anyone else to joyfully revel in famous millionaires from another country humiliating anonymous semi-pros from a different country, you just sound cruel and a little desperate. Sure, you can appreciate when players from your favourite NBA team play well;  and I think that's the excuse for many Canadians, that Raptors' stars Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan are playing prominent roles.  Well then I'd better see you cheer just as much when Jonas Valančiūnas leads Lithuania to a narrow win.

Hey Germany, We Need A New Word

So Schadenfreude is the word for enjoyment of another person's pain. Presumably, that's the pain of someone you don't like. So I'm wondering of there's a word for a kind of reverse situation:

What I mean is, with Schadenfreude, there's someone you don't like, and then you see them experience misfortune, which gives you joy. But what if you see someone experience misfortune, then they do something that makes you dislike them, thus allowing you to enjoy their misfortune?

I suggest we call this a "Hope Solo." This weekend, much of the world got the chance to experience it, when Solo followed up the U.S. Women's Soccer team's early exit from the Olympics with an unsporting insult of the victorious Swedes. So lots of people became retroactively glad they were gone.

It seems many people around the world have an affinity for the American Women's Team. Sure, few non-Americans like cheering for the U. S. of A, but the success of this particular team bodes well for two of humanity's long-term projects: equality for women, and getting Americans to like soccer. You want to feel good about the few women who get to live the life of the American athletic idol.

But the fact is, they've been a hard team team to like. Here in Canada, we're still bitter about the last Olympics, when star Abby Wambach bullied the ref into calling the never-enforced-in-history time limit on goalies handling the ball. It was a perplexing moment: really, you're the best in the world, and you still have to resort to that? Indeed, before allowing the winning penalty kick against Sweden, Solo held up the proceedings to change gloves, in a rather transparent moment of gamesmanship. The American women bring to mind the Belichick-era New England Patriots: Admirable for their success, but also seeming like an inhuman machine.

Anyway, I was going to write more about people being angry about Solo's remarks, so I scrolled through Canadian news and sports sites looking for condemnation of her. But it turns out all the coverage of soccer here just briefly mention Solo and then talk about Canada beating France and facing Germany in the semis. So I guess I should let it go; after all, we still have another game to play.

RSA By Any Other Name

Watching the Olympics is a bit of a geography lesson. It's a reminder that there are lots of countries out there, including a lot of countries that are too well-behaved to get noticed most of the time.

It also comes up that a lot of countries have official names that are longer than the names we normally call them. You see an abreiviation like "RSA" and try to figure out what that is by sounding it out. Rosesia? Rasalla? No, it's "Republic of South Africa."

Sometimes the long form is well known. For instance, most people know that China is officially the "People's Republic of China." Fortunately most of them don't use the entire name, even in the Olympics. So we don't have to remember that Venezuela is really the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela."

Unlike most countries, Canada doesn't have a flowery full name - it really is just called "Canada."  In older media you sometimes hear people call it "The Dominion of Canada," but that name was never made into the official name. And since "dominion" is a name for part of the British Empire, its use has disappeared as Canada has come to view itself as more independent.

Maybe we should get a nice long impressive ceremonial name. I don't think we'd want to go with "Dominion of Canada," since most of us associate that word with either grocery stores or the bad guys from Deep Space Nine. I'll just peruse the list of countries at Wikipedia. Australia is the "Commonwealth of Australia." That's pretty good, but it's confusing with the British Commonwealth. I see Bolivia is the "Plurinational State of Bolivia." I'm not even sure what that means; they probably just invented the word, "plurinational" to excuse a lack of national unity. I can't believe we didn't think of that. So how about it: The Optionational Multicountry of Canada.

Low Marks From The Canadian Judge

One of the awkward aspects of the Olympics is that there is little correlation between athlete's efforts and rewards. To get good enough to win an Olympic medal, you have to work incredibly hard starting from a young age, passing on a lot of the rites of passage growing up. Your reward is huge but very brief fame. Yes, you definitely have to work hard to be successful at professional team sports as well, but it's easier to envision those athletes having happier lives. They get rewarded with lots of money, and it's easier to believe that they get enjoyment out of their sport. For an olympian in one of the simpler racing or strength sports, a competitor spends their young life repeating this same mind-numbing event, gets a huge but brief fame after winning a medal, and then suddenly has to decide what to do with the rest of their life.

That's why I was a little alarmed to see the recent P&G ad featuring a Chinese diver getting chewed-out by his coach. His mother tells him somewhat dispationately that he still has what it takes, and then he goes on to win. It's supposed to be heartwarming, but it gets much too close to my worry that Olympic athletes' dedication goes beyond sanity. It's bad enough with our own athletes, but I've always felt uncomfortable when it comes to athletes from totalitarian governments that see athletic prowess as a national priority. The thought that these competitors are getting pushed by perfectionist coaches is not plesant, even if they do ocassionally get parental pep-talks from a distance.

Of course, you wouldn't have seen this sort of thing during the Cold War. I mean, they might have done a commercial making us feel good about enemies comming together to compete in peace, but you wouldn't have seen any validation of the opponent's methods. Can you imagine an ad with an East German mother holding her teenage son's hand to reassure him while getting his first steroid injection?

I fear that this is a result of our modern business world. If you're a global brand associating itself with a global event, you need ads that play in all places. Or, rather, play in all markets. And sometimes that means glorifying China's relentless drive for perfection. Lest you think I'm being West-centric here, let me point out that I encourage the mixing of the world's cultures, but we really should export only the positive aspects of our cultures. For instance, it's wrong to hate on Americans, but it's hard to disagree with people who resent them dumping violent movies or vapid fast food on the rest of the world.

Bidding Goodbye

Tomorrow, Toronto is making a big announcement about bidding for the 2024 Olympics.  There are conflicting reports of whether they will or won't be bidding.  By the time you read this, you'll probably already know.

Toronto tried but failed when bidding for the games in 1996 and 2008.  In more recent years, city politics took a turn for the conservative, and the Olympic dream went to the back-burner.  But the success of the Pan-Am games has people talking about an Olympic bid again.

Personally, I don't think they should go for it.  The fact people seem to be ignoring is that the Pan-Am games don't really change any circumstances.  Since it used facilities that were either small or far-flung. (For instance, there's no way the Olympic Committee will accept a velodrome in Milton.)  Toronto would still be looking at a tens-of-billions bill for the games.

The fact is, Toronto isn't really in the mood for this.  Even if we assume that the Rob Ford episode was a temporary act of rebellion, the fact is that a big chunk of the city wants lower taxes more than they want grand gestures that will look World Class.  That's kind of disappointing that the city went from being reserved to minimalist in about thirty years, with only a generation of outgoing assertiveness in between.  We in the rest of Canada liked to make fun of Toronto and its quest to be World Class - I'm no exception - but it was always entertaining.

As for the Olympics, you have to wonder how long they are going to be able to keep conning cities into staging the games.  I've always thought that they could make the games far more palatable to cities if we could get past the we-have-to-build-all-new-everything mentality.  Lots of big cities around the world could stage the Olympics without building anything other than specialized venues like velodromes.  They did that in Los Angeles in 1984, and it turned out fine.  Well, I discovered that the only reason they did use pre-existing sites then was that they got special permission from the International Olympic Committee.  They got that permission because they were the only city bidding.  They were the only city bidding because the 1976 summer games in Montreal were such a financial disaster.  But there are still cities willing to stage the games under the current circumstances, so they won't have trouble finding a host, even if it's too rich for Toronto's blood.  And oh look, Los Angeles is bidding for 2024.

So it looks like the Olympics will continue to be a no-win situation for hosts, in which they build a bunch of facilities that are used for the games then sit unused forever.  Although there are horror stories about such things (mostly from Athens in 2004) you can also point to Calgary, where the venues built have been used for years.  Of course, that's because many of those facilities didn't exist in Canada prior to the games, so it was a case of nice timing.  So if the Olympics is going to insist on building all new stuff for each games, they might get away with that if it keeps going to cities that need new facilities (say, Toronto 1984) or emergent economies (China is likely building lots of new stadiums, we may have to keep holding the Olympics there in one growing megalopolis after another.)

I Am Panning The Games

Last week, the "Stats Canada" satirical Twitter account reported that the Pan-Am Games are 3% as impressive as the Olympic Games. If you're outside Ontario, I probably have to give you context that Toronto is hosting the Pan-Am Games this summer. And in needing to inform you of that, I've pretty much confirmed the point of the joke. I'd been meaning to write something about the Pan-Am Games, and that tweet was closely related to the point I was going to make, so here it is:

Hosting the Olympics is expensive - the summer games will cost $10 billion+, and that's even if you don't have a Putin-style ego-and-corruption-fueled spending spree. We can argue ‘til the cows come home about whether that is - in any sense - "worth it" in terms of our spending priorities and value for the money. But let's acknowledge that when it comes to buying publicity, it is at least possibly worth the money: you spend through the nose, but the prize is that you get the world's undivided attention for two weeks, and get a mention in sports history forever.

If you're going to host one of the "secondary" games like the Pan-Ams (or equivalents on other continents) or the Commonwealth Games. You'll spend about a tenth as much (Toronto is spending about $2.5 billion.) So if the Olympics are close to worth it at ten-times as much, the question is, do those secondary games get you one-tenth the publicity for one tenth the money?

And the answer is clearly no. The fact is, hardly anyone who's not hosting notices these games. To put it in perspective, I tried naming the Summer Olympics host cities off the top of my head, and was able to name all of them back to Rome in 1960. But when it comes to the Pan-Am hosts, well, I remembered Winnipeg hosting it back in the 90's, and I remember Indianapolis in the 80's when I first heard of the Pan-Ams, but that's it.

The fact is, we in Canada are suckers for the lesser games like the Pan-Ams. They appeal to two of our main national characteristics: wishing the world would pay attention to us, and being cheap. So we spend big-but-not-huge bucks on these events that seem Olympicy.  It's sort of like buying off-brand products at Walmart and congratulating ourselves on saving money, not considering that they'll fall apart in a couple of months.

Henderson Has Scored For Canada, Or So I'm Told

This may seem surprising, but it was only recently that I finally saw Sidney Crosby's gold-medal-winning goal from 2010. See, I was so sick of the jingoistic hype about Canada's Olympics that I skipped the final.

So why would I assume that I would have seen a goal in a game that I purposely avoided? Well, for a person interested in sports, you would think I'd have seen such a momentous play several times over the course of a few years. I've seen the Paul Henderson goal several times as parts of retrospectives and top-ten lists. Heck, a sports fan probably sees that clip of a guy running through the outfield wall at least once a year.

But the Crosby goal is absent in the sports-highlight-osphere. Yes, the copyright protection on that telecast is so strong that the closest we get is stills of Crosby's celebration after the goal.

On the one hand, I'm glad that the immovable object of Olympic copyright protected me from the irresistible force of Canada's hockey ego. But on the other, this was a big moment that meant a lot to Canadians, but they can't relive it. And what is this legal taboo for? I guess to help CTV sell Olympic DVDs. And also to preserve the value of selling the rights to anyone willing to pony up. In this case, that would be Air Canada, which is why I first saw one of the most celebrated moments in Canadian sport as part of a commercial.

You Need More Sports You've Never Heard Of

After a week of the Winter Olympics, I've got some ideas for new sports:

Downhill Biathlon

The biathlon is interesting, but it would be nice of it was faster. It would also be better if you don't stop to do the shooting. Think of the challenge of shooting at targets as you go by at high speed. Unfortunately, it would be too dangerous to have any spectators on site.

No-Landing Freestyle

This kind of goes for gymnastics too. It's so disappointing when someone does an impressive jump but fails to stick the landing. That's especially when the difference between winning and losing might be some minor thing like keeping their feet together. So let's have a class of freestyle where there's no judging on the landing. It's full marks for quintuple spinning cartwheel, even if you face-plant right after.

Long Short-Track Speed Skating

That is, speed skating on the long track, but with the short track's rules (or lack thereof.) To put it another way, short track is like a stock car race, so this would be like a super speedway race. Oh, and we should have banked turns, like a velodrome.

"Skate" Boarding

When it comes to the "sliding" sports, we've already covered the idea of going down hill on your back, feet first (luge) on your front, head first (skeleton) and seated (bobsled.) Any other combinations would just be silly (say, head first on your back.) The only other possibility I can think of is to go down the track standing on the sled. It would be like a skate board, but with actual skates. At the very least, Shaun White won't think slopestyle is dangerous anymore.

Universal Skiing

There's already a sport called Nordic Combined, in which competitors do a ski jump one day, and cross country skiing the next day. I say, let's take it even further by including downhill skiing. And let's take it even further than that, by having the competitors do each leg one after another, like a triathlon. You cross-country ski up the mountain, then turn and ski down the mountain, and do a jump off a ramp at the end.

Turns Out Very Little News Is Fit To Print

In today's paper, there was an article about the new sport of Team Figure Skating. I'm not much of a fan of figure skating, but I'd heard a brief mention of this team event as one of the new sports at these games, so I read the article to learn more about it.

So they talk to some of the skaters involved, who say they're looking forward to it, mention that Canada is expecting to do well at it. Yeah, but what exactly is it? You say men, women, and pairs are involved, but are they all on the ice at once, or separately?

The article talks about how well the skaters involved have been doing this season, and how that bodes well for the team event. Yeah, but what about the event: if they do compete separately, is it based on just the performance for their usual events, or do they do separate routines for the team event?

Then they point out that the event is open to only the top ten countries, and only the top five counties in the competition advance beyond the short program. That's nice, but do all the skaters participate in the short program? Do they get to choose which ones? And what about the ice dancers? Are they involved with this?

In the end, I gave up and Googled it. One of the first results was a page from the Canadian Olympic Committee, which explained how it works. That leaves me wondering: if I can't get the information I want from the newspaper, and have to go to the source, what do I need the newspaper for?

Cold Olympics

It's too bad we never got to see a real U.S./USSR Olympics. There were only two summer games in the superpowers during the cold war. And both of them (Moscow 1980 & LA 1984) were boycotted by the other superpower. Yes, I know, the USA hosted the winter games a couple of times (Squaw Valley 1960 & Lake Placid 1980) but the winter games have a modesty that tends to defuse nationalism. It's hard to chest-thump over your superiority in events that are, to quote Seth Meyers, 48 different kinds of sliding.

I wish there had been a Cold War Olympics. It would have been entertaining to see each side pretending to play nice, taking subtle shots at each other, and trying to extend each success into a national victory. But more than anything, it would have been good for us. Because at a big event like this, no matter how well scripted it is, humanity will leak out, and the rivals will see each other in a better light.

The upcoming Sochi Olympics may be the closest we'll get to seeing major players at the games really angry at each other. I’m trying to be optimistic and see it as a good thing. Like a lot of people, I disagree strongly with Russia’s new anti-gay law, or their treatment of Pussy Riot and other dissidents. So I don’t like the idea of the country being “rewarded” by hosting the Olympics. But I don’t think it’s really going to benefit them much. In the modern world, a major event doesn’t allow a country to cover up its flaws, it puts them under the microscope.  It would be nice if everyone would figure this out, and only bid on Olympics or World Cups if they have nothing to hide.  Start building that Stadium, Reykjavik.

Ba-Da Ba Ba Baaa, I'm Hijackin' It

Today, McDonald's promoted the Twitter hashtag, #CheersToSochi. The idea was to have people send well wishes to athletes and organizers of the upcoming Winter Olympics.  Not surprisingly, the hashtag was quickly taken over by people protesting Russia's anti-gay laws.

This isn't the first time tweeters have turned a company's hashtag against itself. I'm left wondering how these corporations don't see it coming. It's easy to say that these companies are hopping wildly in to the social media bandwagon before they understand it. We've seen organizations misuse new technology trends throughout the Internet era.  And JPMorgan had a similar problem when they apparently forgot that some people hate banks.

But banks are kind of out-of-touch with public opinion; this is McDonald's we're talking about here. They're the masters of marketing.  If they're that clueless, what hope is there for everyone else?  They do understand that Twitter is a participation medium, not a broadcast medium.  They just don't seem to realize how varied the general public's opinions are.  So have they always believed that everyone loves them?

Olympic Butthole Surfers

There's always a debate at the Olympics about whether it's too big, and whether some of the old sports should be dropped, and whether some more of the big, globally-popular sports should be included.  Rugby and golf are coming next time.  Baseball sometimes gets in.  On the other hand, some of the smaller, quainter sports probably wouldn't exist without the Olympics.  When was the last time you heard about the Modern Pentathlon in any other context?

I differ from many in that I'd get rid of the big popular sports.  See, the Olympics are like Lollapalooza: it started with a bunch of little attractions that don't normally get recognition, but when banded together can generate a lot of interest.  But then it gets more and more popular, and the bigger attractions want to take part.  So you're adding in basketball or soccer or Metallica.  But that makes the little attractions start to seem trivial and irrelevant, and the focus is on the big attractions.  But they seem redundant, since they already get a lot of attention anyway.  Olympic tennis?  Didn't we just have Wimbledon?  Didn't Pearl Jam just tour last year?

I'm not asking to turn the Olympics into some wild freak show of alternative athletics: no one wants to find out what the sporting equivalent of Goth subculture would look like.  I'm just saying that if everyone on Earth is going to spend two weeks every four years (that's 1% of our lives) immersed in sports, it's refreshing when they're not the same old sports we're semi-immersed in the rest of the time.

Prodigious Firestarters

I was pretty happy with the London Olympic opening ceremonies.  It seemed to have a good selection of British culture without having to resort to ancient history.  That's good, since the British can be like fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs: drawing pride entirely from the achievements of the distant past. They had something from just about all of modern Britain.  I heard the one guy complain there was no Doctor Who.  Actually I thought I did hear the Tardis sound effect during "Bohemian Rhapsody."  But if you're going to go into that kind of detail, I didn't see anyone from The Office or Ab Fab either.  I didn't notice any Hitchhiker's Guide reference, but then I didn't count, maybe they had 42 dancing nurses.

However, I was disappointed in the broadcast of it.  If you're not here in Canada, you wouldn't have seen the broadcast I did, but you may have similar complaints about your own broadcaster.  My main comment to the announcers would be this: Shut up.  I'm not even sure the ceremonies need commentators, other than to fill time during the interminable parade of athletes.  I know the whole thing isn't really a great work of art, but I would say that on the scale from "art" to "cheese," Olympic opening ceremonies are much closer to the art end than, say, dance numbers at the Oscars.  And yet we don't need commentators there.  It wouldn't be so bad if they actually had anything to add to the broadcast.  Like say when rapper Dizzee Rascal was performing; he isn't well known outside of the Britain, so it would be nice to introduce him.  But instead, Lisa LaFlamme just assumed we didn't want to hear him and talked over his performance without any acknowledgement.  Also, when she started to talk about the author of Mary Poppins, then realized mid-sentence that she didn't know who wrote it, well that said everything about the media's talk-first-think-second philosophy.  And Brian Williams, if you feel the need to talk over the moment of silence, you've got some serious ego problems.

Earlier I joked that Mr. Bean would light the Olympic flame.  I was shocked that I turned out to be much closer than I ever expected, in that he was actually part of the opening ceremony.  Having young athletes do it was high on symbolism but low on intrigue.  The cauldron made up of the dozens of "petals" was very beautiful, but I have to say on behalf of all Canadians: Okay, we get it, we should have made sure all the torches at the Vancouver opening actually worked. 

So here's my list of other appropriate people to light the cauldron in Britain:

• James Bond, using some kind of pen laser
• A dalek, say in an attempt to exterminate David Beckham
• A football hooligan, in attempting to burn down the stadium
• A backfiring MG
• Roger Bannister, after running another four-minute mile
• A descendant of Guy Fawkes
• Or, for that matter, V (as in "For Vendetta")
• King Arthur, using The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch