Seeing red over Olympic silver

James Clements
Published: August 17, 2008

President Bush stated in a press conference last week that the “Cold War is over,” but it would appear he left the Beijing Olympics a few days too early. If he’d stayed, he would have seen that while Russia couldn’t capture the attention of most Americans by invading Georgia, the women’s team gymnastics competition could stoke U.S. ire toward a communist country.

This time, it’s the Chinese who have Americans seeing red. By capturing the gold medal, the Chinese defeated a U.S. gymnastic dream team led by Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin (who would later finish 1-2 in the all-around). And while the loss was more obviously attributable to U.S. team member Alicia Sacramone’s miscues on the balance beam and floor exercises, even before the first vault of the finals the conspiracy theories had started.

First to speak up was former U.S. team coach Bela Karolyi, who has been working as a commentator for NBC during these Olympics. In an interview following the preliminary rounds, he accused the Chinese team of using underage athletes (Olympic rules require competitors be at least 16, or to turn 16 this year).

“They are using half-people,” Karolyi said. “One of the biggest frustrations is, what arrogance. These people think we are stupid. We are in the business of gymnastics and we know what a kid of 14 or 15 or 16 looks like. You don’t have to be a gymnastics coach to know what they look like at 16.”

Watching the gymnasts from the rest of the world and comparing them to their Chinese counterparts, it seemed hard to argue with Karolyi. Compounding this perception is the militant gymnastics culture in China that has families sending their 3-year-old children to live in state-run training facilities. And the use of government-issued passports to verify the ages of the athletes.

A day after the loss, it was Karolyi’s wife, Martha, the current team coordinator, who spoke up. She blamed stadium officials (read: Chinese stadium officials) for delaying the start of Sacramone’s routine on the balance beam and said the questionable holdup led to a break in the American’s concentration and a fall as she tried to do a backward jumping mount onto the beam.

What’s been lost in all of this is, though it was somewhat dissipated by Liukin’s gold and Johnson’s silver medals in the all-around competition, that the American team can be proud of winning the silver medals. Most of the countries that send athletes to the Olympics don’t win any medals at all.

But while we point out the drive for gold that could lead to cheating by the Chinese, we miss the speck in our own eyes that makes it difficult to settle for second best.

The Olympics are a touchy proposition for Americans, particularly those of us whose first full-time exposure to the event was the 1984 games in Los Angeles. That year, aided by the boycott of the Soviet Union and more than a dozen other countries, the United States seemed to win everything.

Ever since, American sports fans have taken to our couches every four years in expectation of watching a similar “feel good” walk by our athletes over the rest of the world. And this year it seemed we were really in need of the pick-me-up.

Unfortunately, things don’t always turn out as scripted. The most recent example, as I write this, is the loss of both of tennis’ Williams sisters before the medal round (Serena to Russian Elena Dementieva and Venus to China’s Li Na, no less).

If it is part of Chinese culture to be shrouded in government secrecy, then it is part of American culture to expect to succeed at everything. Good or bad, it’s a part of our national character and every four years we have to try harder than usual to keep it in check and remember that the Olympics are about athletic competition and not global standing.

And that’s why in a week when the biggest threat to Western Democracy was Russian tanks driving through an independent nation, it was instead a group of young Chinese athletes who reminded Americans that the Cold War still carries some heat.

James Clements is a Culpeper resident and independent columnist who appears each Monday. E-mail