Posted on 08/12/2012 6:23:58 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Guess they’ll have to add more categories for Table Tennis and Badminton.
Dedication and hard work.
I saw where the IOC keeps the samples for 10 years, and can retest the samples at anytime, as new tests become available.
Apparently they are about to strip some 2004 winners of their medals.
Beyond the Chinese, it will become tougher for the US to retain its big margins in swimming and track and field. We had an outstanding Olympics in those sports this year, but it is no guarantee that it will be easy to sustain. The rest of the world is catching up. Jamaica and the rest of the Carribean countries are challenging us in the sprints and middle distances and the Africans are dominating the distance events despite a down Olympics for Kenya. The Europeans will continue to be tough in the field events.
And it is worth noting that many Olympic athletes from other countries are training in the US, especially through collegiate athletics.
IMO the Chinese want to beat the US badly in the Olympics and will spare no effort to do so--legal and illegal. It is a matter of national pride. Despite all this, the US had a fantastic Olympics exceeding all expectations from the so-called experts. The Russians came on at the end finishing third in the medal totals just 6 medals behind the Chinese. They had 18 medals in track and field trailing just the US 29.
After watching our American team surpass all others in the medal count, I was thinking of how Obama might address the athletes. Based on some things he’s said in the past, here’s what I came up with:
Obama’s Address to the American Olympic Athletes
There are a lot of strong, successful American Olympians who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’re a great athlete, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I dedicated my life to this sport. There are a lot of people who dedicated their lives to something. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great coach somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to win that gold medal. Somebody invested in running tracks and gymnasiums. If you go to the pool — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The uneven bars didn’t get invented on their own. Government research created the uneven bars so that all the gymnasts could spin around real fast on them.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like playing basketball, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own basketball court. That would be a hard way to play a game of b-ball.
The Olympics is proof that free markets work over centralized plannig. Despite the net larger populations and near slave like training regimens from birth central planners cannot keep up with freedom.
Have any commentators covered this aspect of the Olympics? America is successful and rich because of our liberty, not inspite of it.
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