Breathe deeply; this air may not last
Peter Ford | 08.19.08
So, it turns out that BOCOG was right. Actually righter than right.
Not only has the Chinese organizing committee’s prediction that the air would be fine for the Olympics been fulfilled. Its original request that the Games start on August 15 – turned down by the International Olympic Committee – has been vindicated.
It all comes down to the weather, which is often muggy and smoggy and stiflingly hot until the end of August. But that was too late to begin the Olympics, partly because the US tennis Open begins on August 25, so BOCOG had to settle for August 8.
The first week of the Games was indeed muggy and hot, and although the official figures said pollution was within acceptable bounds, visibility wasn’t great. The government’s definition of what it calls a “blue sky day” is a day when the Air Pollution Index is below 100. My definition of a “blue sky day” is a day when you can see the clouds through the pollution.
Then we had a torrential rainfall, and since Friday August 15th, when BOCOG originally wanted to open the Olympics, the weather has been fabulous. Real blue sky. From my bedroom window I have seen hills on the horizon that I had never seen since I moved to China two years ago. I have seen the moon in the night sky, with light clouds scudding over it. That was a first for me in Beijing.
Du Shaozhong, deputy head of Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau, acknowledged at a press conference today that this sort of air quality “would have been impossible” without the draconian measures the government imposed for the Olympics period. It has taken two million cars off the roads, stopped all construction in the city and closed down polluting factories within a 70 mile radius of the capital, among other steps.
He was responding to a Chinese journalist’s question; not surprising, because only four Western reporters bothered to turn up. When the pollution was awful, just before the Games, Mr. Du’s appearances drew large crowds of foreign journalists asking legitimately snarky questions. Now that the air looks fine, nobody goes to hear him say why.
He also noted that Beijingers “hope that hosting the Olympics will help build Beijing into a livable city,” but he made no promises about air quality once the Games are over, the foreigners have left, and everything goes back to normal.
Friends visiting Beijing for the Olympics have asked me what all the pollution fuss is about; as far as they can tell, the capital’s air is just fine.
I’ve invited them to come back in October.
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With only one gold, Isinbaeva still the best ever
Mark Sappenfield | 08.18.08
Pity poor Elena Isinbaeva. If Michael Phelps is now the best swimmer that ever was, then perhaps he could be called swimming’s answer to Elena Isinbaeva.
If she could somehow win more than one medal for pole vaulting, the world might notice.
The Russian has broken the world record 23 times. She is the only woman to top the 5 meter barrier. And tonight, she won the Olympic gold with only two jumps.
“She is the Sergey Bubka of women,” says Olympic historian David Wallechinsky.
That is a compliment.
Sergey Bubka, we must understand, is to pole vaulting what Michael Jordan is to dunking and last-second shots.
Most of the night Isinbaeva paced across the stadium infield, baseball cap pulled low like blinders, waiting for the moment when she could get on with the business of trying to break her own world record – again.
By the end of the night, she was the last athlete standing in the Bird’s Nest, a stadium waiting to see something extraordinary.
She certainly kept them waiting. Whether it is a flair for the dramatic or a mindset worth of “Monk,” her pre-jump routine seems more suited for the cooking channel than a sports broadcast:
Hide under a white comforter in 90-degree heat to focus, add liberal amounts of sticky black pine tar and a dash of chalk to your hands, speak incomprehensibly in the direction of the bar, then propel yourself nearly as high as a two-story building with only a wobbly stick to help you.
There are others like her at these Games. Most obviously, there is Phelps. But there is also Ryoko Tani, five-time Olympic judo medalist and mother of a 20-month-old son, who claimed bronze here. There is and Michal Martikan, four-time Olympic slalom canoeing medalist, who won gold here.
All could make a claim to being the best athletes in the history of their sports.
But none – except perhaps Phelps – makes his or her case so convincingly. Before the Games, Isinbaeva said it would take a world record to win the gold medal. It turns out, she was talking about herself.
American silver medalist Jen Stuczynski, who had said she was coming to Beijing to “kick some Russian butt,” never cleared 4.85 meters – Isinbaeva’s second jump.
The rest of the field now dispatched, Isinbaeva got on with her own personal meet. There was 4.95 meters, just to get warmed up – and to ratchet up the suspense a bit, she failed to clear it until her third and final attempt.
Then it was on to 5.05 meters – a new world record. Again, the first two vaults failed, merely to show us all that this was, in fact, not as easy as baking a quiche.
Then, of course, on the final action of the night, she went up and the bar did not come down. World record No. 24.
American swimmer Aaron Peirsol yesterday called his teammate’s accomplishments in the pool a “Phelpsian feat.”
Perhaps it was an “Isinbaevan feat,” however poorly that trips off the tongue.
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The agony: Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang drops out of race
Peter Ford | 08.18.08
A greater catastrophe for Chinese fans was hardly imaginable.
Liu Xiang, the golden boy of Chinese athletics who carried the hopes of a nation for a track and field gold medal, pulled out of his 110m hurdles heat this morning with an inflamed Achilles tendon.
Four years of anticipation, four years of glorification, four years of intense expectation, they all evaporated after only four paces. Liu pulled up before the first hurdle, gripping his leg, and hobbled out of the stadium in tears.
Liu has no counterpart in America. In the Chinese sports Pantheon he sits at Yao Ming’s right hand, and his face – with an eager smile plastered over advertising billboards the length and breadth of the country – is just as well known.
He was the first Chinese man ever to win a track-and-field gold, at Athens four years ago. Ever since then the Chinese media has been hyping the prospect that he would successfully defend his Olympic title on home ground this month.
He has been made into a superhero for more than a billion people, and his failure to do more than get out of the starting blocks has stunned a nation that was looking to him to cap an already wildly successful Games for China.
As soon as he disappeared down the Bird’s nest tunnel, the Chinese internet exploded with comments. And not all of them were sympathetic.
An instant poll on Tianya, one of the most popular web portals, found 33 percent who were not only disappointed but accused Liu of “trying to find an excuse because he was scared of losing.”
That was not far short of the 40 percent who took the kinder view that he was right not to force himself to run if he was injured.
“If Liu Xiang did not compete it was only because the pain was intolerable,” the head coach of China’s athletics team, Feng Shuyong, told reporters after Liu’s let-down.
Mr. Feng had Liu’s longtime coach, Sun Haiping, next to him at the press conference, but he took almost all the questions. Mr. Sun was in tears most of the time, his chest heaving with sobs, and he simply could not talk.
After such a massive build-up, stoked by both the Chinese state and by commercial sponsors, Liu’s precipitate and humiliating departure will undoubtedly spark a good deal of debate at home and abroad about whether he simply caved under unbearable pressure.
Liu himself will doubtless have something to say about that himself. And he will have to muster his courage to face the Chinese public.
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Jamaican women sweep the Olympic 100-meter race
Matthew Clark | 08.17.08
In a blur of black, gold, and green, Jamaica’s women swept the 100-meter
finals Monday, adding to the island country’s sprinting dominance just one
day after countryman Usain Bolt shattered the world record with a time of
9.69 seconds.
Shelly-Ann Fraser took the gold, winning her first international title with
a blistering time of 10.78 seconds.
But it took a photo finish to show Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart tied
for silver.
The world may be shocked by Jamaica’s performance, but for Jamaicans this is
a long time coming.
Sprinting is to Jamaica what college football is to the US. And a system to
develop homegrown talent has been brewing for decades while the island’s
coaches have become some of the world’s finest.
Jamaica’s athletes have sacrificed a lot to get here.
“I’ve given up a lot. With track and field, I cannot have a life,” silver
medalist Sherone Simpson told me after a June training session in Kingston’s
National Stadium. (See excerpts from video interview.)
It must feel good on that medal stand in Beijing.
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Bolt’s record 100 meters adds to the Hyperbole Olympics
Mark Sappenfield | 08.16.08
We have seen that look from Usain Bolt before. Cast your mind back a week: Michael Phelps, poolside, his historic race for eight gold medals saved by 0.01 seconds and teammate Jason Lezak.
There is, however, one significant difference. Bolt did it while he was racing.
With seven strides remaining in a 100 meter dash that must surely rank as one of the most memorable moments in modern Olympic history, Bolt looked around and saw – absolutely no one.
In Athens, we needed super slow-motion just to distinguish between who finished first and fourth in the closest 100-meter dash in Olympic history, by some measures. Tonight, it seems like we’re still waiting for the rest of the field to finish.
In the 100 meter dash, it seems, 0.2 seconds – the gap between Bolt and the world-class sprinter who finished second and will forever remain completely anonymous – is roughly the difference between 2008 and the Triassic.
Well after Bolt left the track, the scoreboard was still frozen, as if it, too, could not comprehend what it had just witnessed:
World Record: 9.69 seconds.
Had China been allowed to sit down at some cosmic diner and order what sort of Olympics it would like to have, it could not have chosen better than this.
China nearly doubling its closest competitor at the top of the gold-medal table after the first week?
Not enough.
Michael Phelps repeating – and perhaps tomorrow surpassing – one of the most legendary Olympic feats: seven gold medals in a single Games? And doing it in a race where, even watched frame by frame, the truth of his first touch in today’s 100 meter butterfly seems impossible?
More please.
A 100-meter dash that seems the culmination of everything humankind has promised since first standing on two feet?
It is the Hyperbole Olympics – a Games suitably epic for the “Lord of the Rings” generation.
I confess I know woefully little about track. Every Olympics is a crash course. But I also know I have never in my life seen anything like that.
Those who are far more intelligent about track than I say Bolt can only get better. He is only 21. He is, by nature and training, built for the 200 meter dash.
To which I ask: Is it possible to lap the field in the 200 meter dash?
On Wednesday, Aug. 20, perhaps Bolt will be able to start his celebration after the first 100 meters. After these Olympics, perhaps the rest of the sprinting world will need a handicap system – as in, Bolt must now run while knitting.
Or perhaps the governing body of world track and field will have to make Chicken McNuggets a banned substance. At the press conference, Bolt described his day: Woke up at 11, watched TV, had some nuggets, took a nap, ate some more nuggets.
You can be sure that on Aug. 20, the McDonald’s in the athlete’s village will be very busy.
