Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts

Saturday, February 22, 2014

SOCHI 2014.

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As people like me actually know very little about competition in winter sports, and despite this, the 2014 Sochi, Russia Winter Olympics have been outstanding to watch on television, of which the skiing, hockey (especially), cross - country skiing, and even the curling.  Have been searching for an appropriate pictorial for the young people competing in the various events in Sochi, and one might lookup the photoportraits on "Sporting News" or Time.com for starters, and then later at, i.e., the "Sports Illustrated" site that has its annual swimsuit issue out now. 

The thing that struck me about these 2014 winter Olympics as televised on N.B.C. has been that portrayal of the contest times as happening extremely quickly, especially for the individual events like the Downhill and Slalom races, the ski jumping, rink skating and so forth.  I am sure this was the result of the goals of network coverage that called for everything to be timed to the millisecond.  With respect to the commentators, the N.B.C. Sports broadcasting crew remains the best for such events and brings out the competitive and dedicated spirit of every contestant on screen, especially again among those who are interviewed during and after matches.  People like me also greatly enjoyed watching the snowboarding as this is a sport that appears not to be too well - defined, but that captures young peoples' attention and interest among others in the featured sporting contests.  This shows the contests are much more equalized and the winning contestants more stratified than typically was the case in the days of old.  Last, but not least, were things like the speed skating and figure - skating that for me have a more specific and specialized audience, maybe more among actual skaters, that also proved to be well - worth seeing,

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and are apparently the calling for many superior contestants on a very high competitive level.  Overall, many of the happenings at this year's winter Olympics, and obviously I did not catch everything despite watching lots of programming, both early and late when the broadcasts were televised, I still have to mention here as probably being the best winter games since Lake Placid, NY, in 1980.  At least this is a little true for the Norwegians, Canadians and Russians who came out with more gold medals than the Americans who have the most medals overall to date in Sochi.  The television coverage of these games was quite good and everyone need have picked an event and to have made an effort to tune in to their contests - I chose the hockey (USA men's and women's) this year and the teams as they were did not disappoint.  Those Canadiens, especially those from Toronto, ... , are especially tough with their hockey, though people like me believe some voodoo was involved in cutting off the U.S. hopes for the gold medals in this area (no sour grapes here, however).  Am as well not taken aback by the sports successes of the Netherlands (22 medals,) and for instance, Japan (8,) that show how the contests at the Olympics now are more equalized and stratified - that they make room for everyone more than before at this point.  Really a good games so far. 

Winter Olympics 2014 site.

United States Olympic Committee site.

International Olympic Committee site

Sunday, August 12, 2012

"The United States and China" at the Olympics.

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There are many additional facets to look at in the U.S. / P.R.C. political relationship at this point and this calls for a possible re - examination of the stereotypical Olympic athlete, in all evidence talented but clueless, who might test his / her physical and mental toughness at places like Long Beach, CA, before reporting for international competition every four years.  The thing that is odd is this duel will continue in another two years, primarily as a pre - cursor to the next Olympics events, at the World Championships wherever they will be held - competitivity and bragging rights again about things like sports medicine, training methods, practice techniques and the like. 

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That the P.R.C. has overridingly made the choice to emphasize anew itself in the international political arena via the Olympic medal vanguard is odd and embarrassing for a nation - state that can not tie its shoelaces with simple things like an actual and real social safety net, human rights, nepotism, and other obvious defects including the single - party political system it operates under that stems from a severe reaction to the aloofness and carelessness of royal and imperial rule that came to an end in the early 20th century.  The current Chinese regime ends up looking politically more like that imperial regime of old in the way it establishes society's priorities, structures its accession and polity in the areas of administration and governance in the overall and again, overrriding will to power that any sociologist or anthropologist will caution against in its many forms as established and institutionalized by the CPC through its by - line of "spirit, land, energy."  The happenstance of the stilted and conjured, and otherwise celebrated, Olympic achievements and accolades, and this without examining every statistic, of the P.R.C. at this point capture a place in history certainly, though the importance of this is to make one wary of the application of the ways one makes championship athletics happen:  The implications of the showing of Olympic commercial spots on NBC at these 2012 events as featuring a past soviet - bloc gymnast, and the actual story of Ms. Nadia Comenici are compelling and an object lesson in what can drive national policy on the subject of athletics and international achievements and awards to the extent they are completely devalued by the constant banging away at young people about how there is a requirement to have medal status or other high international recognition.  Such a politicization of athletic achievement detracts from the simple and non - professional, and honestly - competition - driven status in international athletic venues at this point.

When we were kids, and as we read the local newspaper and talked with our buddies about what goes on in Russia, and what went on in places like East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and so on, and even given the paucity of the news about the soviet bloc at the time, young people in the States knew how the ambitions of the communists and non - aligned countries had politicized much of the international scale and scope we learned about without respect to occasional, actual news that came through about it.  The realized vaulting ambitions of the P.R.C. policy - makers about their place in international athletics is a softer version, and therefore more palatable for some right now, of the social engineering of the soviets that has gone to the dust bin.  It is incredulous how this is allowed to supplant the honest efforts of athletes in other countries such as U.K., Germany, England, France, and even the Russian Federation right now, and the assertions of P.R.C. on the athletic stage in many ways at this point are dependent upon un - civil ideas and practices that are undue and inappropriate given the peaceful, forthright and unified attitude of many of the athletic teams at the 2012 games this year.  Media images.  Please pardon typographical errors here. 

THS