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发帖数: 1502 | 1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/01/london-2012
Bravo to the Chinese badminton players – they're just trying to win medals
Criticising a nation's athletes for wanting to win as many medals as
possible is to forget what the Olympics is really about
The attacks on Chinese and Korean badminton players are grossly unfair. They
were doing their best with added cunning. Day and after day we read
relentless hyperbole about the vital importance to national pride of winning
obsessed is the media with this single index that the BBC has stopped
displaying the medals table because it is too humiliating. This is the
pastiche chauvinism of a banana republic.
Along come the Chinese, who clearly know how to win. You plan. The badminton
heats were apparently staged to give an incentive, in certain circumstances
, to losing games in the qualifying stages. Faced with the risk of a tougher
opponent later and thus losing a medal, the players did what their
tacticians said. They lost a round. I cannot see how, in sporting terms,
this is any different from sprint cyclists hovering for an age on a curve,
waiting for the right moment to surge forward. Anyway, the athletes were not
trying to lose, they were losing so as being more likely to win.
The result on the night may have been depressing for the spectators, but no
one was forcing them to watch. They would be the first to howl if a British
team so messed up the qualifying rounds as to lose a medal. The concept of
the Olympics as being not about winning but "about taking part" ended long
ago. Modern Olympics are parodies of Hitler's nationalist games of 1936.
They are a statist contest determined by who wins the most medals.
As for watching people lose, that can develop its own rules and excitement.
As a boy I recall the most engrossing event at the village sports day was
the slow bicycle race. The only rule was that you had to stay on your bike
and could not go backwards. Three-legged races were similarly enjoyable, as
was running backwards. It was only the swimmers who elevated not moving as
fast as possible from A to B into an art, with backstroke, butterfly and
such nonsense.
The truth of the matter is that the actions of these badminton players are
in the spirit of the modern Olympics. It is not a spectator sport but a
deeply serious competition for national pride. The players should be
congratulated on their ingenuity. |
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