PC sweat
by Rudolf Dempsey
Some countries will do anything to get an Olympic medal. Georgia, for example, went to the trouble of recruiting both its men and women’s beach volleyball teams from players rejected from Brazil’s national team. This meant that players who spoke no Georgian, knew almost nothing about the country, and had only visited it once or twice, briefly, competed under its banner. Luckily, justice was done and both teams failed to get a medal.
Georgia’s neighbor Turkey was more successful. It got a couple of silver medals from the Ethiopian long distance runner Elvan Abeylegesse. Compared to the ‘Georgians,’ at least Abeylegesse had lived in the country for a few years and had also married but then divorced a Turkish national. Still, the reason she finished second in the 5,000 and 10,000-meter races wasn’t because she was Turkish. Despite what it said on her passport or vest, she was still biologically benefiting from having the lightweight frame and high red blood cell count of an Ethiopian.The athletic team of the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain is largely made up of Moroccans brought there by the financial bribes made possible by oil wealth.
Even the host country China has shown that it is prepared to dilute the defining national principle of Olympic teams in order to get its flag flying at medal ceremonies. In preparation for the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese recruited the top Japanese synchronized swimming instructor, Masayo Imura, to train their team, resulting in a first medal in the synchronised swimming team event.
Such tactics obviously undermine the spirit of the Olympics, and turn it into a grubby, money-spinning, political posturing farce. But they also reveal a ruthless search for talent. Regardless of the fact that Georgia’s beach volleyball players couldn’t even find the country on the map, the Georgians knew that the Brazilians were the go-to-guys when it came to beach volleyball. In the same way, the Turks knew they were on to a winner when they handed over a Turkish passport to a top Ethiopian long distance runner.
The Chinese, too, were very particular. They didn’t bother recruiting a Japanese coach just to make their team look more ethnic, diverse, and colorful. They went to Japan because they knew that one reason the Japanese have excelled at synchronized swimming for so long is because of their excellent, hard-working coaches.
This is quite different from the American approach, where the emphasis is clearly not on developing, selecting, and attracting the best potential athletes. This is demonstrated by both the foreign-born athletes and American-born athletes selected to represent the USA in these Olympics.
First, the foreign-born athletes: Unlike Turkey, Bahrain, or Georgia, most of these were genuine immigrants, not top foreign athletes offered special inducements to help raise the national medal count. Compared to the 27 foreign-born athletes at the 2004 Olympics, the U.S. Beijing team included 33 foreign-born athletes. These included a Russian-born gymnast, Nastia Liukin, four Chinese-born table tennis players, and seven members of the track and field team, including three 1500-meter runners: Bernard Lagat (Kenya), Leo Manzano (Mexico), and Lopez Lomong (Sudan).
Apart from Liukin, who won five medals including gold, none of them proved world beaters. The three 1500-meter runners in particular did extremely poorly. Manzano, Legat, and Lomong were all easily eliminated in the 1500-meter heats and semi-finals, finishing last in their respective races. Although they may have won the right races to qualify for the Olympic team, they were clearly nowhere near good enough to represent a nation that has traditionally dominated athletics.
As the selection of the slug-footed Lomong to carry the American flag in the opening ceremony revealed, many of the foreign-born athletes were there more as political gestures, rather than as expressions of a determined competitive spirit.
Lomong, a Sudanese ex-refugee, served ostensibly as an ‘external symbol’ aimed at criticizing China’s support for a brutal Sudanese regime. But he also served as an ‘internal symbol’ aimed at a domestic American audience, embodying the notion that America is the dumping ground of refugees, an open borders country that has no right to a White identity.
This was also a factor in the presence of the other foreign-born non-White athletes. A look at Manzano’s career soon reveals evidence of extreme ethnic favoritism. Despite poor form in his final year of high school – running 4:26 over 1,500 meters and being overweight – Manzano, who was still a Mexican citizen at the time, was nevertheless selected to run for the NCAA Texas Longhorns.
“I red-shirted for cross country in my freshman year,” Manzano revealed in an interview. “I couldn’t even keep up with teammates on runs. I think 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes at the most. I was so weak and heavy.”
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