Eshin Direct

I am going to wade in on the big Olympic debate that I’m sure has a million bloggers working furiously to add their inflated two cents worth. I myself have a highly devalued currency in this regard since my only interest is probably the women’s diving and gymnastics. However, life being life, last night I sat watching the men’s gymnastics, namely floor exercise and pommel horse event, and the bronze mixed badminton finals between Indonesia and China.

Does anyone have any doubt that all sports, with perhaps the exception of professional wrestling, is rigged?

Now, I’m not saying the Chinese aren’t good but having watched both the floor event and pommel horse event from a layman’s perspective it seemed that the Chinese performances were a little lackluster compared to others (say, for example the Japanese competitors like Uchimura Kohei and Tomita Hiroyuki). I will admit that I have no idea about the technicalities of the game but isn’t sport supposed to be a spectator’s event as much as it is about the physical prowess, the excellence of skill and the individual talent of the athlete?

What good is a sport that no-one can be truly amazed by the feats performed because they are distracted by something more spectacular as opposed to something that is technically accurate. The perfection needs to be seen but more importantly needs to be understood by those watching it. Do we have a right to expect this from the Olympics? Yes, it is a chance for many athletes to prove to the world they are the best and for that they very much need the eyes of the world upon them. The millions in value that we provide through various marketing and sponsorship channels, means that the Olympic committee needs to make sure that the average layman still needs to be impressed by a performance even if he doesn’t understand it.

For the China performances that I saw, they won on something that I personally couldn’t see. For the Women’s Synchronized Diving, I could easily see how Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia aced that one. It was a performance way ahead of the pack. One wonders though with the judging of the Pommel Horse and the Floor Exercise gymnastics whether the judges were more concerned about a riot on their hands if say a Japanese competitor won in front of a home Beijing crowd (one recalls that it is China and one recalls that anti-Japanese riots back in 2005).

I’m sure the Indonesia mixed badminton team of Marissa Vita and Limpele Flandy could probably attest to the advantage their competitors, He Hanbin and Yu Yang, had with being in front of a home crowd for the Bronze medal contest. It was a close match but how much did that slight edge come from a crowd predominantly Chinese?

Tags: olympics, politics, Random Thoughts, sport