Feel the Spirit

Just back got home tonight after spending the entire day on the Olympic Green. Saturday was all about playing tourist - today was all about reveling in the Olympic Spirit. And my timing couldn't have been better, as it rained nearly all day today and made it a good day to stay inside.

Security here to get into the Olympic green, where the Bird's Nest and probably half of the venues are located, is insane. Insane. A valid ticket to an event of the day is required to enter the Green, followed by an x-ray of all bags, a walk through a metal detector, a wanding and patdown, and a request to demonstrate all electronic equipment. As I'm walking around with a camera, a camcorder, my Blackberry, a Chinese phone and my iPod, it takes a while. But I'll say this - although an American was killed Saturday in Beijing, I feel extremely safe once I'm in, a feeling compounded by the military installation smack in the center of the Green, complete with radar and anti-aircraft missiles on standby. Whether the soldiers on guard are awake or not is, apparently, an entirely different matter (see photo).

The afternoon was dedicated to water polo, and if I've ever seen a more physical sport, I can't think of it. The dudes that play this sport at the Olympic level are 6'-4", 6'-5", 220-230, amazingly muscled and absolutely ripped. Ripped. It's like if Schwarzenegger in his prime had the torso of a swimmer. And to get that body, all you need to do is be able and willing to dash up and down the length of an Olympic-sized pool for ninety minutes, treading water the entire time while playing offense or defense, and wrestling in place with a similarly-sized barbarian at the same time. Saw the Croats, ranked number one in the world, beat up on Italy, and the US take down a Chinese team that was about as good at water polo as I am. As the host country, they get a free entry into the competition, but safe to say they won't last long.

(Which leads me to wonder - in the Chinese system of sports schools, where everyone with any aptitude for sport is shunted off to special academies where all other education is an afterthought, and failure is said to be rewarded with physical abuse - at what point, if you are a Chinese athlete, do you become a water poloist? I mean, are you a swimmer who just doesn't make the cut, and so your consolation prize is a course of anabolic seroids and a funky cap? Do any of these guys actually choose water polo for themselves, or is the sport "bestowed" upon them? Just asking, 'cause I don't can't imagine any kids in China with posters of Tony Acevedo on their walls instead of Yao Ming. Well, not any straight ones.)

From there, a friend and I caught a preliminary round of women’s gymnastics. Now, in some circles, women’s gymnastics has come under some fire recently for the young age of its participants and the glossy veneer of preening dance and presentation that accompanies the actual athletics involved. Such criticism has only increased this year with the suspicion that China has doctored the ages of two of its female gymnasts, who apparently had only been fourteen years old until they made the Olympic team this year, when they suddenly became sixteen to make the age cutoff. But anyone who has ever watched an American girl of teen vintage or less can attest that the popularity of gymnastics derives from those very attributes that bring it criticism. For so many young girls, watching these 80-pound marvels test the human limits of plasticity is like looking into a mirror of dreams. With the ice-skating princess of the winter games, gymnasts form one half of the square root of girl power, which may in later years manifest itself in riot grrl or punk chik and cause endless angst for countless parents, but in its original incarnation takes the bedazzled form of vaulting fairies.

I was bored. The Chinese, Russian and US big dogs had competed earlier in the day, and we were watching France and Belarus stumble through some pretty sloppy routines. A nice face plant or two sparked things up, however.

I headed home. Happy to be back at the hotel at a decent hour, with time to stop at the lounge for a quick beer. In previous days, the lounge has been pretty quiet by 11:00 at night, but this evening it was packed, with all of the workers standing around in front of the bar, watching a replay the USA-China men’s basketball match. Yao Ming vs. Kobe Bryant. The toughest ticket in the games. Have I said that everyone here loves basketball? Every Chinese basket, including free throws, roused a large cheer. An older Chinese woman seated in front spoke no English but was engrossed in the game, and when Kobe missed a three-point attempt, I heard her speak one solitary word of English – “Hahahahaha!! BRICK!”