08-08-08 The Olympics: Sport or National PR?

Well, not from first hand, because Yugoslavia was in 80's already pretty much free and open country. Our communism was much lighter then communism in eastern block.
However, there were several reports that in many ex-Soviet countries, especially on Baltic, more precisely in Estonia where sailing events were held, during Olympics people for the first time openly started to ask for independence, both inside and in talk with foreigners.
Moscow itself was almost closed city before Olympics, there is no doubt that close encounters with foreigners and 'different World' was very important.
There's a good book about it - by British journalist...I forgot the title, but I'll try to check later...

It's been a great pleasure and wonder for me to watch the mood swings of China throughout my life. When I was going to high school "Red China" was as mysterious and shut-off from the rest of the word as North Korea is now. Very little news escaped from the mainland. We did get to see a bit of video now and again, mostly of the Wall or the Forbidden City, but not much else.

The Cultural Revolution and the rise of the Red Guard did not help very much. That was around 67 68.
Nixon's stunning visit in 72 (wait. was that a mood swing for us or for them?) came and suddenly here was this giant new place with a giant population that wanted to deal with the world, but not in the way any other country had ever dealt with the rest of the world. China would be China.

And so it has gone. Flat on it's back sixty years ago, occupied by foreign armies and swirling with armed conflict, today China is the factory of the world, the fastest growing economy in the history of mankind and the holder of most foreign currency of any other nation. In a word - wow.

And so it will go. China will not become the world's next democracy, it will become it's richest nation and conquer the world without firing a shot.

Joe(except at it's own people)Nation

Gotta love NYC humor. Great!

In Mexico we don't know what changed the country more, the student movement or the Olympic Games. Both in 1968, and somewhat correlated (you know thigs are different when the eyes of the world are watching).

In any case 1968 was the year of the shift.

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One month before the games, president (and "Natural-Head-of-the-Party", "First Magistrate of the Nation") Gustavo Díaz Ordaz proudly and worringly defined Mexico an "an untouched island". He was proud of our isolation, and worried that we were losing it.
In his point of view we were isolated from war, social unrest, and "foreign ideas" that were "alien to our idiosincracy" like free speech, socialism (or truly free markets), rock music, human rights, women's rights...

"I live in a jail disguised as a country", I wrote back then. I was 14.

"We were asphyxiating in the untounched island", wrote recently one of the movement leaders, now a political analyst and gay activist.

Less than 6 years after the Olympics we were relatively free (the resemblance with Tito's Yugoslavia was striking, as I have written elsewhere). A complete democracy didn't arrive until the '90s, but '68 was the turning point and after that there was no looking back.

fbaezer, That's an interesting perspective from someone living in Mexico. My very first visit to Mexico was two of the border towns of California and Texas as a young man. Talk about misperception about a country, that was the impression I had for quite a few years until my wife and I visited Mexico City and Acapulco on our honeymoon in 1964. Many years later, we've been to Acapulco to take a cruise around the Panama Canal to New Orleans, and also a Mexican Riviera cruise from Acapulco to San Francisco. That's when my perception of Mexico changed, but it had nothing to do with Mexico's political environment; just that the Mexican people were very friendly, and the sites and sounds were an attractive part of the country.

It was a shrewd system, c.i. Great Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa said Mexico had "the perfect dictatorship". In Mexico it was called "dictablanda" (soft dictatorship).

The first time I could vote for President (1976) there was only one candidate, José López Portillo.
I didn't vote. Some of my friends did, for unregistered candidate Valentín Campa, a Communist, for he was the only one brave enough to launch a campaign. López Portillo won with 100% of the valid votes. There were 1 million "nullified votes". The Communists claimed they were all theirs.

The Olympics have been corrupted by doping, politics, commercialism, and class separation (the wealthy nations can and do use financial advantage to change the results with technology as well as paying the participants)....in my opinion the games are too corrupt to be interesting. It is time to end them, and the masses can bring this about by refusing to pay attention to them.

If the IOC should ever do anything about reform other than talk about it I would be open to changing my mind.

The may have been recently (50 years) corrupted by doping and commercialism (great Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser was suspended for 10 years, thus endingh her career, for wearing a bathing suit different that the one from the sponsor... in 1964).
But modern Olympics were born with class separation. Baron Pierre de Coubertin wanted them as a pretext for the young elites of rich countries to mingle, get to know each other and, perhaps -in his romantic thought- make less war.
That's why amateurism was so important in the early days, it ws better if there were not many working class kids competing. Figures like Dorando Pietri and Paavo Nurmi were preventing from competing for earning a few dollars in street races. Then there's the horrible case of IOC stripping Jim Thorpe of his medals: the truth behind that is that Thorpe was an American Indian and had become too popular by the public.

As for national "classes", IMHO, it has originally more to do with the Western canon. The political objective of the games is to boast the superiority of nations. This was perfectly understood by the US governments, Hitler, the postwar Bolsheviks, Fidel and the new Chinese leaders (Mao had a too oriental mind to understand it).
Widely practiced sports like judo and tae kwon do won a seat only because of Japan's (judo) and the 5 dragon's (tdk) economic performance. Had the dragons been Latin American, fronton would now be an Olympic sport.

So what's left for countries left out of the rich boys' group? To compete and try not to be pariahs. To enjoy, besides the victory, the awe and surprise factor it has over the powerhouses. And to not fall prey of the not-so-hidden agenda behind the games.

The Olympics are a beautiful, exciting, compelling individual and collective human experience, with some toxic built into it. It's better to know how to digest and enjoy, than just put it aside and shun it.

I don't know how the opening did in the rest of the world, but Americans seem to agree with you:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/08/09/total-us-television-audience-for-opening-ceremonies-almost-70-million/4639

Just spoke to my man in Beijing who's over there being paid handsomely as an interpreter. He says the hype in the press about the smog and foul air is just that -- hype. According to my friend, breathing the air of Manhattan is a far worse experience than breathing the air of Beijing. Hot and humid as hell, yes, but no smog.

(In the interest of full disclosure I have to tell you that Michael lives in Chicago. So maybe his prejudice as to the quality and breathability of air in NYC may have its roots in a certain parochialism.)

MA, It's been the luck of the Irish that Beijing has been having a "better than average" pollution-free air. When I was in Beijing last November, what came out of my nose was black. Our tour director who lives in Beijing said they don't drink or cook with tap water. The government stopped most factories, building projects, and reduced the number pf cars allowed in the city during the olympics. That's the major reasons for the better air in Beijing.

Still got about a week and half until the marathon.

Joe(we'll see)Nation

So far, this is the fake Olympics. Fake fireworks, fake singers, fake crowds, fake sincerity about openness.
Thank god for the spectacle that the athletes are producing. Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt come to mind. The aussie girls were great in the swimming and the guys great in the rowing.