I used to love the Olympics also until I started to read these books by this guy
Beijing is actually closing off roads and shutting down more factories to clear the air.
If pollution is an issue in the first place, I really wonder how Beijing got picked in the first place.
What other awful things can we look forward to this year?
Well the Olympics are supposed to showcase the country!
Personally I think that it will be quite exciting watching the track athletes running round wearing respirators,the contestants in targetting events like shooting and archery trying to peer through the murk in an attempt to see the target.
And of course in the rowing and sailing events the crews desperately trying not to go into the water even if it means losing that being preferable to being poisoned.
A diplomat mate of mine whos been out there for several years was moaning that he’d just started getting used to the pollution in Beijing when he was moved to somewhere even worse.
He also mentioned that the cost of visas to enter Tibet from within China were extortionate in an attempt to deter people from going there and that he was saddened by the huge amount of old traditional architecture being demolished under the rule of the mighty Yuan.
She’s a fucking Russian citizen. She lives and works in Russia.
Why aren’t you pitting the 33 immigrants competing for the USA? What’s good for the goose…
I can’t believe that anyone still cares about that USA Vs Russia thing. I didn’t care even during the Cold War. Does it really prove something about ideology if a guy born on this piece of dirt can jump further into a sandbox than a guy born on that piece of dirt?
And in news surprising no one in Canada, judges eliminate Canada’s former gold medalist gymnast with questionable scoring. It’s too early to tell, but this might be the figure skating debacle all over again. I wish Canada would just opt out of these ridiculous games.
I love the Olympics. I see sports that I rarely watch. Right now they have beach volleyball on. US and Latvia ,how good does it get. Earlier the swimming prelims were on. I don’t think the pool water was polluted.
Yep I love it.
Really, they’re more concerned about the horses’ lungs than the athletes’ lungs?
I suppose the horse owners love their animals, and won’t risk their health. Hmm… what does that say about about the the national Olympic organizations and the various coaches?
People have free will. Horses, not so much.
Latvia won in a huge upset.
After the 1972 Olympics and the decision of the IOC to continue the games after the massacre, it is difficult to have any respect for them.
Not everyone agreed they should be stopped. These people spent a lifetime preparing. The athletes wanted to go on.
The networks invested a bundle. They were going on regardless.
It was a long time ago. These people in it now were not even born. They deserve their few seconds in the sun.
It’s pretty obvious not everyone agreed that they should be stopped as they went ahead.
And yes, the murder of 11 athletes means nothing against the training you may have put in.
Not training abut a lifetime with little else.
I’m too young to remember the 1972 Olympics, but I do remember Heysel well. At the time I thought the game should have gone ahead (as it did). Since then, I have changed my views - for all the sanctimonious crap that was spouted at the time about the importance of rising above such acts, playing on trivialized the deaths in some way.
:rolleyes: Right. [sarcasm]And none of the other athletes felt any concern or even guilt about continuing.[/sarcasm] But they did continue, 36 years ago, and maybe, just maybe they worked even harder in memory of the athletes who were killed.
And today China has an abominable human rights record, but it’s citizens lives are changing and maybe, just maybe 36 years from now they’ll live in a democracy. And these Olympics might just help a tiny bit in getting there. But if they don’t, the athletes deserve our respect even if the IOC itself might not.
Who said otherwise?
And canceling the Games would have brought how many of those dead athletes back to life?
But it would have certainly been a major propaganda victory for the murderers.
This seems an even better place than that general Olympics thread to point out China’s Triumph of the Will in the Burma Digest. I find it fascinating that Albert Speer Jr was the designer of the master plan of the Beijing Olympics like his father was for the Berlin Games.