Apparently the Olympics are on. So to fulfill my blogging contractual obligations I’m doing a post on it.
Comrade Bone already seems to have produced the quote of the fortnight:
I absolutely refuse to cheer on anyone called PIPPA – so that rules out all our equestrian toffs. I’ve yet to see anyone off the local estate pop out for a spot of ‘three day eventing’ or ten minutes of ‘dressage’.
So instead I thought I’d focus on some truly great Olympic moments. Except the only one I can really think of – with the possible exception of Steve Ovett gloriously beating that smug Tory git Sebastian Coe in the 800m at the Moscow Olympics – is Mexico City ’68 when US athletes Tommie Smith (picture above, centre) and John Carlos (right) delivered black power salutes from the victory podium for the 200m during the US anthem.
This caused quite a big stir in its time.
Carlos went on to say it was “for those individuals that were lynched, or killed that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage.”
While Smith said, “”If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight.”
It’ll be interesting to see if today’s pampered, steroid-fuelled automatons can muster anything of even vague political significance in protest at the shitty little regime of this year’s Olympic hosts, China.
Thanks for that BB. I really needed an antidote to the jingoistic euphoria over those gold medals.
OK, some guys and gals did some stuff very fast and they happened to be British. So the rest of us, sitting around on sofas drinking beer and scoffing crisps, can feel vicariously good about ourselves. Big deal.
Is this the only one you can think of? There must be more than this surely? How about Jesse Owens 4 golds example to Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?? Hard to beat I’d say.
http://www.jesseowens.com/biography/
Anyone have other examples??
Talking about defiant gestures, if you check out Emma Bagley’s Slightly Barmy blog (link over on the right there) you’ll see that she’s boycotting the Olympic Games! By, er, not watching them on the telly. That’ll learn ’em.
hmmmm… isn’t it time we encourage a co-operative global community as opposed a competitive one? As for the ceremonies – what a load of rubbish and waste of money! OH NO… we’ve now got to suffer 2012 and another PR exercise for London! Couldn’t the games have returned to their home in Shropshire or somewhere more interesting (and deserving). Think of England… and many folk think of rolling countryside, fields and villages as opposed a sprawling overcrowded smelly dysfunctional metropolis.