Emma Okocha
26 August 2008
analysis
"After Beijing, there is only one Michael, Michael Jordan is a basketball legend, but Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympic athlete of all times" - Jim Lampley NBC Sports.
"The Chinese opening ceremonies can never be duplicated....Canada has no such budget as to match this overwhelming spectacle" - George Parkinson, Member, Canadian Olympic Hosting Committee.
Nigerian football players get their Silver medal won at the Olympic football tournament at the the 2008 Beijing Olympic games. AFP PHOTO.
THE greatest success story coming out of the games so far, is the 2.5 million people from Jamaica. On the other hand, the Chinese put up a work man show for the opening ceremonies. The press in search of heroes and commercial advantages hailed the Chinese restoration of the Sun dynasty, describing the tedious overtime bore as glamorous, exulting spectacle. We disagree.
The whole complicated clash of the old and new China on canvass across the digital camera was more than morbid entertainment. Anytime you introduce science, without warning on stage with the surface arts, you are courting rebellion from the audience, that is used to remorseless entertainment. And the Chinese unsmiling workers, with their very staid, unsexy overalls did not help matters.
After some few minutes of the "Yellow Danger Hollywood Act" the rough actors succeeded in sending the children to sleep. There was very little aesthetics. Those workers should come down to Brazil or to the Atilogwu village and learn how to beat the drum.
Losers are those cultural buffs . Each time these Olympic parades are on, they decide to appear like peacocks or butterflies of the rain forests. Papa New Guinea, Burundi,Swaziland, Lesotho. We don't have to look like the forest inmates to celebrate our traditional attire. Look at Tanzania, combining the European cover jacket with the Muslim sultan gowns. What is that?
We return to the sublime aspirations of the people of Jamaica. I have visited the island as a tourist and as a satellite tennis competitor and ATP director . One of those paradises on the planet, where the memories of the first touchdown is so entrapping that it forces your return.
The welcoming united nations population of Kingston, where the black the white, the brown are all classified as the Caribbeans. Oh Yes , these people at the capital are united by the shared heritage of history, language, geography and socialization.
Negril on the Pacific coastlines challenges the renowned beauty of Paris, the romantic intrigue of Monaco, the coquettish character of West Virginia, and the midnight sexual overthrow of Casablanca. Don't leave your hotel bed late in the night, when the city comes under the supreme veil command of its hordes of belly rapping Arabian virgins. So who will not forgive me if we did not take Jamaica serious before Beijing. After the Athens Olympics, Jamaica went home with very few drab medals.
On their way home, the managers of the sports decided that next time they meet the world, the records will tumble and the world would take notice. After all, this is the land that have sustained a sublime pedigree in the sprints. Raymond Stewart, controversial Ben Johnson who ran in the purple colours of Canada. Donovan Powell, Merlene Ottey, Grace Jackson, all coming after probably the best of them all veteran Mcinley who ran the sprints in the early 50's.
Jamaica came home after that Olympics and decided to stay home and employ the native advantages of their national sports to beat the world. A program was approved to keep the athletes at home . At home the weather is nice and the athletes can train all round the year round. The young and upcoming sprinters were admitted into the track program of the top University of Technology in Kingston.
There, the track and sports program are tied to the academic program of these students. Not far away are their parents , families and coaches who understand their culture, their ambitions. Unlike their foreign coaches the home coaches are natives and affordable.
The program to produce the best sprinters in the world also avoided the foreign circuits and focused on the spartan training schedule which eventually attracted the Jamaican student athletes and other professionals who returned from Europe and the United States.
Suddenly the flight to America with all the stress of combining college academics and top college athletic competition started to fizzle. The Asafa Powells and Fraziers usually discovered from High Schools are discretely programmed and supervised at the tough high fields, scattered in Kingston and other cities.
The goal of destroying all opposition is hatched here at home, when the final product is unleashed on the tartan tracks of the universe. Look at the sneer on the face of "Lightening"Bolt and and clinical finish of Frasier.
You may go further to ask the question, whatever happened to Cuba, the US, the Balkans and the Germans in the sprints? With the way the Jamaicans have dominated, it is predictable that the island nation will not only continue to outdistance all competitors, Jamaica is already replacing Europe and the US as the training ground of the world future super stars.
Parading the women fastest gold and the men relays, and the 21 year old, Lightening Bolt, eating up every mammal on the fast track, Jamaica has as the greatest outcome of the last Olympics, imprinted for years, the restafallen flag as a super athletic emblem never to be ignored down the the sports balconies of the world.
Michael Phelps and the Greatest Olympians
The media announced him as the greatest of all times. The criteria for that award turned out to be very simplistic. At the Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps was able to erase the decades old record of Mark Spitz, who won over seven swimming gold medals in Munich, Germany.
In relaying the Michael Phelps story, the media were bent on electing the greatest Olympian of all time from day one. Hence, the Michael Phelps story made the headlines the day he won the first gold. He was the news the day he won the seventh gold to equal Mark Spitz record.
The moment he passed the mark, Michael was anointed, and from then, would be treated and given the status of a Hollywood superstar.
We shall give the champion of the waters his due. He excelled, despite his early life disadvantages of growing up without his father. He was able at the Athens Olympics to conquer the world.
In Beijing , Michael against, very brutal competitions among the best in the world, managed to lick every rival and coasted home with over eight medals. From which ever angle you look at his achievements; whether he was competing on water, in the field, inside a ring, or jumping the bars, Michael Phelps is a rare phenomenon.
Having said that, I would say that it is hasty to declare him the greatest Olympian of all times. That title never went to Jesse Owens.
The fastest man of his generation to win four gold medals before the intimidating glare of Hitler and the German war mobilized population. The title was not good enough for the Scottish born Eric Liddel who in 1924 would not run the 100yard Olympics on Sunday.
The Sabbath day is for the Lord, he protested. In the same Olympics, he was going to commit suicide by moving up to do the 400 yards . He ran the first 200 yards with all his might and was in the lead.
When everybody including the stadium thought he was finished, Eric went back on his chin, turning his body and limbs into a windmill in operation. On the final lap, he accelerated and disappeared from his grunting adversaries. Olympics for the records, had never seen, or will never see any race like that.
For his infectious Christianity, the film, Chariots of Fire was in 1981 dedicated to his memories. There is always the epic of Cassius Marcellus Clay in the Rome 1960 Olympics. That story can be told by any teenager from any part of the dividing lines or regions of the globe.
Nobody can ignore the Ali classic introduced and made flesh by the young man's winning of the heavyweight Olympic gold . So how can anybody award the greatest medal to any human without the mention of the greatest of all time....Mohammad Ali!
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
