Huffy Flounce

Dalty wrote:Maybe. Is he British?

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote: I agree with S___ B___ that the combination of capitalism and sports is a problematic one. A capitalist system can't help but commoditize a thing, regardless of the purity of its original intention or presentation.

I also agree with S___ H___ that sports has provided women in the US with at least one avenue of self-expression. It has done something similar for minorities. Unfortunately, as is the case with US sports in general, this has occurred within a capitalist system. Female athletes and minority athletes in the US run the risk of being conceived of and dismissed as products--regardless of their level of achievement.

This recasting as products also occurs with athletes who are white and male, to some degree, but athletes who are white and male enjoy the luxury of being in a greater place of power within the capitalist framework. They can more easily be conceived of as *people* who also happen to be athletes. They're less likely than female athletes to have to be seen first as sex objects, and they're less likely than minority athletes to be defined almost entirely by their athleticism.

I see that the US has pulled ahead in both gold medal and total medal counts for the 2016 games. This is as unsurprising to me as it probably should be.

Before the US took this double lead, a number of US Americans in my Facebook feed were questioning whether or not China's success was the result of doping. It may not have been the intention of the questioners to suggest that no country could challenge the superiority of the US without cheating, but I took it that way.

This could just be something I have to work through. I assume the worst of US Americans when it comes to their attitudes toward their competitors.

I mentioned the US's Cold War-era questioning of the USSR in E____'s earlier post. Some of the attitudes toward China's earlier lead seemed to me an extension of that. Speaking of attitudes, articles like this are disheartening:

http://www.sbnation.com/2016/8/9/124196 ... ie-ledecky

"Rightful" lead? I also see coded language here:

"Diving and weightlifting have been most lucrative for the world's most populous country, bagging three gold medals apiece."

Why even add the "world's most populous country" detail? I'm sure I'm reading too much into it, but it strikes me as something somewhere between an excuse and an accusation. "Of course they're doing well," the writer may be suggesting. "They have the largest pool of people to pull athletes from. There has to be some reason beyond raw athleticism and mettle for them to be doing so well."

Again, this way of looking at things could just be something I have to work through. Still, I see articles like the SB Nation article, and I see mentions of things like "starting beef," and all I can see is the reflection and propagation of unhealthy attitudes.

I also see in Olympic swimming something like a microcosm of my problem with the US's participation in the Olympics. With Michael Phelps, maybe, I see a microcosm within the microcosm. Phelps already had the record for most medals and most gold medals going into the 2016 Olympics. The only real medal record of note he had left to break was Larisa Latynina's individual event medal count. (I guess this may depend on what you consider to be record medals of note.) He tied that last night, and he still has two individual events to go. He will almost certainly break her record before his time in Rio is up.

Phelps hit the fourteen individual medal mark in five trips, of course, while Latynina did it in three. This could be seen to speak to US American excessiveness. What does Phelps have left to prove? What kind of culture would drive a person (and a white male, at that) with a reported worth of $55 million to feel the need to continue to seek accolades and assert his utter dominance in a sport?

There may be, as G____ W_________ says below, some potential for healthy competition with the Olympics. I mentioned earlier that I believe smaller countries have benefited financially and emotionally from participating. Unfortunately, participating is often the best they can manage, and, almost like disadvantaged school kids, they come away with little more than participation medals. The kids with the money and the state-of-the-art training equipment, more often than not, are the ones who walk away with the "real" prizes. In the case of the US and its dominance of the Olympics, it's almost as though they're condescending to allow others to play ball.

For me, the US's Olympic dominance mostly just reinforces the idea that the US can afford--both monetarily and time-wise--to game. It's a gaming culture with an emphasis on winning and with a promise of compensation. We game so much we've developed a game theory. We game so much outside of the Olympics that we're almost just doing our usual thing inside of the Olympics, and then we pat ourselves on the back for doing better than other countries and teams--like, say, the Filipino diving team (I've seen some pretty snotty responses to their performance at the 2016 Olympics)--that have little to no access to the kinds of privileges we enjoy.

(I switched to "we" in the last paragraph to underscore something I said in my response to E____'s other post. I accepted the accomplishments of US Olympians as my own. I'm forcing myself to admit that I'm part of the gaming culture, too, whether or not I like it. I am, after all, looking up medal counts a couple of times a day. I may be doing it for reasons other than many US Americans are doing it, but I'm still doing it.)

Dalty wrote:That Trump won't be the nominee.

That the Furious movies are worthwhile endeavours.

Dalty wrote:Up late watching Tae Kwan Do. It's nothing like the movies.