What are we, chopped liver? Why was the route planned for only one stop on this entire continent, and then not even in one of our biggest cities? Though even if the single stop were in New York or Los Angeles instead of San Francisco, it would still be wrong in my opinion.
Who plans the route? They can’t have done it this way to mostly avoid countries that have free speech and the right to protest. After all, there appear to have been several stops in Europe, and there were, in fact, protests.
Not many stops in Europe - 2, 3 or 4 depending on where you draw borders of continents. One of these is the 2012 host, and perhaps the Paris stop as a sop to the nation which thought that role was a God-given right. South America and Africa hardly get a complete tour, either, with an understandable strong focus on Asia.
The Olympic flame burning over Beijing is a travesty of what the Olympic spirit is supposed to be about. I won’t watch a second of this Olympics and if the torch were coming to my area I’d protest too.
ETA: Not that we’ll probably have to worry too much about the flame burning in Beijing. The air quality is so shitty there probably isn’t enough oxygen to keep it going anyway.
It isn’t a big deal. The Chinese also sent us millions of cheap little plastic torches for our kids to play with. The reason you haven’t seen them yet is because the first batch was covered in lead paint.
Here’s a list of places that the torch visited the last time the United States held the Summer Olympics:
Look at all those countries! I’m amazed the torch arrived in Atlanta on time, given the generous, all-inclusive tour of the world that it received.
The fact is that it was only in 2004, with the Athens Olympics, that the torch began to make any sort of extended world tour. Before that, its route had generally been confined to the part of the world where the games were to be held.
When the games were held in Sydney in 2000, the torch went straight from Athens to the South Pacific, did a bit of island-hopping, and then went to Australia. Similar types of schedules applied for earlier Games.
I love the Olympics, Winter or Summer, and, to my regret, will probably be doing as Otto says he will, not watching. I might not protest, but I wouldn’t go across the street to watch this torch. I won’t deny the athletes their chance though, because they’ve worked too damn hard to let a crappy host country spoil things for them.
Not to hijack this thread, but I’m curious about something. I heard on one of the news reports that activities of anti-China protesters forced authorities to extinguish the Olympic torch. Has there ever been any other time when the Olympic torch was extinguished while being carried?
#6 isn’t “one of our biggest”? We have one of the biggest Chinatowns in the US, plus the heavily Chinese Richmond & Sunset districts (SF is 32% Asian, mostly Chinese), and Oakland’s Chinatown. San Francisco is a damn good place to run the Beijing Olympic torch in the US.
That said, if I were in charge, I probably would’ve ran it through, say, Phoenix. What a big ol’ cockup today has been. I think hosting the actual Games would be only slightly more disruptive.
Could have been worse; if their leg had been set on fire, the other runners would have been forced to carry them the rest of the way instead. I’m pretty sure that’s international Olympic law and can not be violated without resulting in global war.
Given how much trouble they’re having this year, I say it’s just as well that the Torch is getting out of the US as quickly as it is.
I got to hold the Torch (well, a torch) back when the Olympics were in Atlanta. My parents found out that the route thru Michigan went right past their subdivision. So, I went out there early one morning to watch the Torch go past. About 15 minutes before the flame arrived, a car dropped off the next runner. The flame was going to be handed off right where we were standing!
In due time, the runner showed up. There was an RV shadowing him, and people were passing out little pennants that said “I saw the Flame.” It was pretty cool. After the runner passed on the flame and extinguished his torch, he let those of us that were standing around hold it. That sumbitch was heavy! I can’t imagine carrying that thing over my head for a long distance.
The torches, incidentally, were butane-fueled, with a little flow control. Basically, they were big Zippo lighters on a stick, with a glass wind guard to keep the flame from blowing out.
