Olympic Events Worth Watching

There will be heroes and new world records when the Beijing Olympics closes in a week.

I’ve never watched an Olympics from outside the living room (which is just as well; I may not survive the Games with all the walking and the big crowds), I can only dream of personally watching games that have other kinds of heroes— the unusual winners, the winners against all odds, and the heroic losers.

No, I don’t mean the kind of hero in the league of our past sprint queen Lydia de Vega who, I understand, opted out in the Barcelona Olympics because of foot injury but was seen having fun dancing the Tinikling that evening.

Never mind Johnny Weismuller too of the US who won two golds in swimming and a bronze in water polo in Paris in 1924, and went on to become an actor, as Tarzan.  I’ve watched Chariots of Fire the movie anyway (great theme song there), which the Paris Olympics was known for.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics must have been great if only for Germany’s Luz Long and his rival, Jesse Owens, one of the first African-American to cross racial boundaries.  At a time when Adolf Hitler believed in the superiority of the Aryan race, Long befriended Owens in front of Nazis, at his own peril.
The 1948 London Games had the French concert pianist Michelene Ostermeyer win the gold in both the shot put and discus throw.  It also had Karoly Takacs, a member of the 1938 Hungarian world champion pistol shooting team whose right hand was later shattered by a grenade.  He taught himself to shoot with his left hand and won a gold in the rapid-fire pistol event.

Also in the same Olympics was one of the first women to compete against men in the equestrian dressage.  Lis Hartel of Denmark, paralyzed by polio below the knees, won a silver.

The 1960 Rome Games added historic glory by holding wrestling at the Basilica of Maxentius, gymnastics at the Caracalla Baths, and marathon at the Arch of Constantine.  Here a black African first won an Olympic medal, Ghanaian light-welterweight boxer Ike Quartey.  He was followed by Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila who ran barefoot, ignored the insults, and ended up as the first black African Olympic champion.

The 1964 Tokyo Games, as a call for world peace and homage to the atomic bomb victims, had an Olympic flame carrier who was born on 06 August 1945, the day the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima.

Mexico’s altitude of 2,300m above sea level (with 30 percent less oxygen, devastating for athletes in endurance events) made it a contentious host in 1968, but it was here that world records in all men’s races 400m or shorter were made.

The 2000 Sydney Olympics highlighted Eric Moussambani of Equatorial New Guinea, who learned to swim only nine months earlier.  He flailed his arms for two laps, almost drowned, finished last, and went down in Olympics history as the slowest 100m freestyler.  He became a celebrity, attracting sponsorships and a scholarship in Spain.  He came out a far more human champion.

Now think Ireland at the mention of “Paddy” (no, no, it’s different from our rice paddies), and think of the vaunted Irish humor too.

Irish lawyer Colin Carroll had sent out documents to the cities of London, Boston, New York, Beijing, and all the cities in Ireland to bid for the hosting of the inaugural Paddy Olympics.

Himself serious about sports, the lawyer won the gold at the world elephant polo championships in Nepal and is the first Irish wrestler in Japan’s world sumo championship.  He’s just as serious about having fun and having the world join in.

Some events planned for the Paddy Olympics are backward running, three-legged hurdles, backward triple jump, egg-and-spoon races, and underwater swimming.

Also up for grabs is the interspecies relay, with two humans and two animals.  “You could pass the baton to the animal of your choosing— you could pick a dog, an elephant, whatever,” Carroll said.

Would that those cities invited to bid for the inaugural hosting answer Carroll soonest.  This is one Olympics the world need not dare miss.

(17 Aug 2008)