I have to say being here is kind of funny when the Olympics (ORIM-PEEKS!) are going on. Like we lost in Baseball to S Korea and the Koreans at work brought it up. Maybe next time we'll clear out our best players from all the Major Leagues (that aren't juicing it) and come out and see who wins. It's just a little hard when the season is on back home and they are paying out millions in contracts so these jerks can run to London in 2012 and beat the world in Baseball. We did it in Basketball and clobbered everyone. We didn't do it in 1980 and some rookie hockey players made history. I guess we'll have to stop that and go all pro and shatter the whole spirit of the thing. We live off-base so there's really no American TV on our 30 cable channels. We'll catch a short glimpse of who someone is in English and the Hangul Fairy will wave her wand and magically the whole thing goes Korean. So you have to be quick. It's really hard in team sports competitions, because someone will score a point and you have to look at the color of the jersey, watch the scoreboard with writing you don't recognize and try to figure out who is who. Or my favorite thing, where the American is about to do something and they either cut to a commercial or switch sports so you can watch some Korean not get a medal! I doubt it's intentional, and they're keeping up with their medal count, so I can't blame them, and we're all a little nationalistic over here, so it's fair play.
Julie got to watch her gymnastics and quite a bit was on the Armed Forces TV channel, so she got to watch Americans fall off the balance beam and the Chinese cheat in English. And you don't have to guess what the commentators are saying. But they do speed up in Korean when their guy is ahead. I don't see how their fellow Koreans can follow it! I did see the female weightlifter from S Korea get the gold medal. They must have cooked her up in a lab somewhere. Korean women couldn't look like that if they ate like Americans and watched TV all day.
And probably the best part of this whole thing is this- when a Korean does something, you can tell there's a few hundred people watching, because you hear yells from all 4 buildings and they echo. They all have their windows open and they cheer loudly so you can hear it. I wonder if it's like that in a place like New York during the Superbowl- except they probably wouldn't have their windows open- maybe in Miami.
Heaven help us if we ever beat these people in World Cup Soccer. I can see the rioters outside our door now. Lucky for us, we'll never be any good at Soccer or there would be a lot more dead Americans overseas.
I guess if we really wanted to, we could have the government subsidize all the Olympic sports and pay our athletes to get really good and then even more people would hate us, because we'd beat everyone at everything. But we take the rookies that have paid the price and do it for the love of the game. And the endorsements that follow at least a few silver medals. Would you buy anything from the guy that took the Bronze?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Justin, our government does pay the athletes. I do believe it is $5000 per gold medal, $3000 for silver and $2000 for bronze. But that hardly covers what you have to pay in training and flights to train and compete in america and internationally, esp. if you have to fly a horse. Robin
Exactly- it doesn't cover the millions in training costs and travel and living expenses. Unlike China where they pay for everything the spirit of winning at all costs. Even to the point of turning kids into slaves of the sport. That's why they're doing sensible things like making minimum ages and stuff. So they don't ruin someone's life against their will in training all day every day because someone else wants them to win. Otherwise we could grab girls at age 2 and start training them and alter their bodies and win at everything but if they get hurt or lose interest in it, they're ruined.
Hey, the women won a gold in Soccer. It's just the guys that stink. Oh, and does Julie think the Chinese girl (He) is really 16??? I don't think she looks 16. I think that is going to become an issue soon.
Post a Comment