PLAY BY PLAY Lights, cameras - let's get to the sport
By Jesse Fink
There was a huge kerfuffle during the week when a reporter from Korean
broadcaster SBS infiltrated Beijing's National Stadium during dress rehearsals
for this Friday's Summer Olympic Games opening ceremony.
The tape, later put up on and taken off video-sharing site YouTube, was only
about a minute long and didn't show much more than would you and I have come to
expect from such extravaganzas - massed communist-style choreographed dance
routines, outlandish props, gymnastic feats, projections of large moving images
onto unlikely surfaces, thunderous Cecil B De Mille-type music, fireworks
galore - but from the outrage that
greeted the "spoiler" images you would think the poor hack from Seoul had
exposed China's nuclear secrets.
It's an opening ceremony, people. An expensive, overblown melange of circus and
propaganda that ever since Moscow 1980 unfortunately has assumed so much
importance every four years that host cities spend more time and money devising
ways to outdo each other for spectacle than addressing the things that make a
real difference to a city's residents: like efficient transport, good roads,
open space.
No one can doubt the political importance of opening ceremonies; how they are
used to express a nation's identity, its aspirations, its history, to the rest
of the world at a time when the rest of the world can safely be guaranteed to
be watching. But what is their relevance to sport?
The sport, the real reason we watch the Olympics, the best kind of performance
(uplifting, soul-soaring, dramatic), almost is consigned to a disappointing
support act - a long drawn out intermission - for the big-ticket events at each
Games: the opening and closing ceremonies.
While no expense is spared to stage these multimillion-dollar productions and
to commission the biggest names in showbiz to lend their expertise and
imprimatur to them, many of the athletes competing at the Games have to make
all sorts of sacrifices - especially financial - to give themselves a chance to
be there.
There's something a little bit inherently tacky about that, in my view, even
tackier than the floats and inflated dirigibles often deployed in these lurid
productions.
The great part of an opening ceremony is always the simplest: the climax where
an athlete runs into the stadium holding the Olympic torch and the crowd,
stirred by this enduring symbol of the Olympic ideal, gets to its feet and
roars.
For me, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics opening ceremony was defined by the sight of
former boxing champion Muhammad Ali, racked by Parkinson's disease, raising
aloft the torch. A sight both beautiful, poignant and, because of his
condition, triumphant.
I challenge anyone to try to remember any part of the ceremony that came before
it. I tried. And I cannot.
Who China chooses to light the Olympic cauldron will be a very interesting
gauge of what image this great but troubled nation wants to present to the
world. Basketball player Yao Ming, probably the best-known Chinese personality
in the world, would be a logical choice, but he has been anointed flag bearer
for the Olympic team for the second straight time and has already carried the
torch through the gates of the Forbidden City in the capital.
When asked who he thought would light the cauldron, Yao said, "I believe it is
an honor that will probably go to one of our older Olympians or athletes.
Someone who was a pioneer. They have stood the test of time and have a deeper
understanding and sentiment for the Olympics and Chinese sports. I think these
people are most suitable for such a historic task."
But Chinese media speculated that Yao would be involved, possibly helping a
young survivor of the May earthquake in Sichuan province light the Olympic
flame. Which would be lovely. And so against the grain of the razamatazz that
preceded it.
Clearly, it's an issue that was decided long ago in Beijing-government
backrooms (But it was still unannounced when Asia Times Online uploaded this
edition).
Still, you can bet some spectacular scenarios were considered. Like a flying
Shaolin monk. Or a fire-breathing animatronic Chinese dragon. Or the reanimated
corpse of the chainsmoking Mao Zedong, who flicks one of his cigarette butts
into the pyre.
Either way, it'll mercifully be over soon and the real theater can finally
begin.
Jesse Fink is a leading soccer writer in Australia. He is the author of
the critically acclaimed book 15 Days in June: How Australia Became a
Football Nation and has won various awards in Australia for his sports writing.
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