Quotulatiousness

December 11, 2012

Deserved praise for Christine Sinclair

Filed under: Cancon, Soccer, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:57

Cam Cole explains why Christine Sinclair deserves all the accolades that are being awarded:

So what was it about Sinclair that allowed her to win the Lou Marsh on Monday, having led the Canadian women’s soccer team to a mere bronze medal?

Well, one thing the 29-year-old striker from Burnaby did — has done for years, but did most profoundly at the London Olympics — was lead a women’s sport to a place, in her country, above the men’s equivalent.

It’s no coincidence that she is the first soccer player in the 76-year history of the award to win the Lou Marsh.

[. . .]

Fortunately, in Canada, our standards are not so narrow. We don’t consider it much of a negative for a captain of our national squad — who is superior in every other way, who is unselfish and rises to the occasion and doesn’t roll around on the turf as if felled by sniper fire every time she is touched by an opponent — to express our national rage when her team, our team, has just been jobbed.

Overwhelmingly, Canadians were glad Sinclair went off on the referee, with the able assistance of her even more combustible teammate, Melissa Tancredi.

Overwhelmingly, after an incident that in normal circumstances might have been a national embarrassment, the country rallied around Sinclair, and her fellow Olympians chose her to carry Canada’s flag in the closing ceremony.

After a bronze medal? Yup.

August 14, 2012

O’Neill: London outdid Beijing in politicizing the Olympics

Filed under: Britain, China, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:22

Brendan O’Neill says that the London Olympics were far more politicized than the Beijing games in 2008:

From the flurry of fanboy commentary that followed Danny Boyle’s am-dram opening ceremony to the insistence that the Games represented the coming to fruition of the post-Diana dream of a new, less stuffy Britain, the urge to politicise the Games has been intense. That the political classes have sought so shamelessly to usher in ‘another kind of Britain’ on the back of the Games speaks volumes about their desperate need for a new national narrative, and their disillusionment with the democratic route to social overhaul.

Normally we frown upon elites that heap their political obsessions on to mass sporting events. We think of Hitler turning the Berlin Games into an advert for Aryan superiority (a vision shot down by Jesse Owens) or of the Beijing opening ceremony’s thousands of fantastically coordinated drummers and boastful history lesson, described by one British hack last week as ‘crypto-fascist’. And yet, Britain’s ostensibly liberal observers thought nothing of turning 2012 into an advert for their own allegedly superior way of life and thinking.

The tone was set by Labour MP and historian Tristram Hunt, who described Boyle’s opening ceremony as the ‘march past’ — that is, victory parade — of his side in the Culture Wars. The ceremony was proof, said Hunt, that ‘the left took victory in the Culture Wars’, and moreover that a New Britain was being born: if the Queen’s Jubilee celebrated a ‘staid and nostalgic national identity’, this ceremony ‘offered an attractively contradictory, complicated, and above all creative conception of these Isles of Wonder’.

There has since been a concerted effort to turn the ‘bonkers’ opening ceremony into a new national narrative. Somewhat defensively, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland insists that it is ‘not just Guardian types’ who are exalting in the new political vision provided by both the ceremony and the multicultural message of the Games that followed — the whole nation is, apparently, recognising that ‘we have glimpsed another kind of Britain’, and that we should ‘love the country we have become — informal, mixed, quirky — rather than the one we used to be… reactionary’.

August 9, 2012

Cam Cole: FIFA launches “Captain Renault-style” investigation

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Soccer, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

Now that we’ve all had a bit of time to calm down about the awful officiating in the Canada vs USA women’s soccer game, Cam Cole explains why FIFA should penalize the Canadian team for their intemperate comments:

On a magnificently warm, sunny Wednesday at the pristine playing fields of Warwick University, all was forgiven if not forgotten by the Canadian women.

Word spread quickly that FIFA, the sports governing body, had determined that its investigation into the bitter post-game remarks by the losing side needed more time and … well, had basically decided to bury the whole thing and maybe one day suspend the star of Canada’s team, Burnaby’s Christine Sinclair, at some future date — like for a couple of friendlies she hadn’t planned to play anyway.

To say coach John Herdman was relieved to have his best player available for Thursday’s bronze medal match against France — to say nothing of the thunder to Sinclair’s lightning, the equally vocal Melissa Tancredi — is a considerable understatement.

[. . .]

And let’s face it, the Canadians were out of order by almost any sport’s standards in the volume and toxicity of their remarks about the Norwegian referee.

If they had merely said she was blind as a platypus and ought to be carrying a white cane and have a guide dog to help her navigate the field, they’d have been well within the bounds of fair comment.

It was when Sinclair accused Pedersen of having decided the result before the first ball was kicked, and when Tancredi suggested that the referee slept in Team USA jammies, that matters crossed the line from acceptable criticism to slander.

Ineptitude is one thing, bias quite another.

So FIFA took matters under advisement, and launched the kind of thorough investigation that Claude Rains launched when Humphrey Bogart shot the German general at the end of Casablanca.

Of course, I must point out that Cole is absolutely wrong here: it was Major Strasser who was shot, not a German general.

August 3, 2012

Did the Olympic badminton tournament format lead directly to four teams being ejected?

Filed under: Britain, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:57

Scott Page and Simon Wilkie contend that the real responsibility for four badminton pairs being tossed out of the London Olympics should fall on the tournament organizers, not the players or their coaches:

Why though did teams try to lose? And specifically, why four teams? The answer lies in the organization of the Olympic tournament and provides an illustration of the importance of a field of economics known as mechanism design.

Here’s how the Olympics set up the tournament. In the “round robin” phase, the 16 teams were divided into four pools, each team playing all three other teams in its pool. The top two finishers in each pool would then advance to a playoff.

After pool play, the tournament becomes single elimination (also known as “win or go home,” with the lone exception that the semi-final losers would compete for the bronze medal). This single elimination portion would pit the winner of one pool against the runner-up in another pool. The winners and runners up were matched up in such a way that no two teams from the same pool would play in the first round.

The best teams advance, and by coming in first in your division, you play a runner up from another pool — an expected weaker team in the knockout round of eight. Not only does this make sense, it’s a tried and tested institution that has stood the test of time, from little league to the FIFA World Cup.

They offer some alternatives to the existing tournament format that might work better. On the players themselves, I see the point that Page and Wilkie are making, but I still agree with the BWF decision to sanction the players. For that matter, I’d support my local badminton club in this kind of decision in a local tournament. To have gotten away with what these teams attempted to do, they’d at least have to pretend to be seriously playing. I’ve seen better acting by seven-year-olds.

August 1, 2012

Badminton in the headlines, but not in a good way

Filed under: Britain, China, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:53

It’s not a sport that generally attracts a lot of attention during the Olympics, but several Badminton players are accused of deliberately losing games to secure better match-ups in the elimination round:

China’s Olympic sports delegation has begun an investigation into allegations two badminton players “deliberately lost” their match, state media say.

Doubles players Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli are among eight players charged by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) with “not using one’s best efforts to win”.

Four players from South Korea and two from Indonesia have also been charged.

Some of the players said they were saving energy. Reports say they wanted to lose to secure an easier draw.

It may not be a technical violation of the rules to “take it easy” in a non-critical game, but it does sound as if these particular players didn’t even bother to make it look like they were competing.

The match between the top-seeded Chinese duo and South Koreans Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na came under scrutiny after the longest rally in their game lasted four shots.

Match referee Thorsten Berg came on court at one point to warn the players, who also appeared to make deliberate errors.

Both pairs were already through to the quarter-finals.

The Chinese duo lost, meaning — Xinhua noted — that if both Chinese pairs continue to do well, they will not meet until the final.

Update: The IOC Badminton World Federation (BWF) brings out the ban hammer:

EIGHT female badminton players have been sent home from the Olympics, disqualified by the sport’s world federation after throwing matches in a case condemned by London Games boss Sebastian Coe as “depressing” and “unacceptable”.

A disciplinary hearing held this morning, which Australia’s badminton coach made a submission to, found that four players from South Korea, two from Indonesia and the competition’s top seeds from China deliberately tried to lose their qualifying matches in an attempt to manipulate their draws.

The four sets of doubles teams were charged after matches on Tuesday littered with basic errors. Accused by badminton’s international governing body of “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport”, they were ultimately found guilty of trying to lose with the motive of improving their positions for the knockout stages.

The spectators who attended the matches on Tuesday night will not be offered refunds by the London organizers, according to the BBC:

Update, the second: I couldn’t find any actual footage of the match in question until CTV posted it (not embeddable, unfortunately). It’s amazingly bad. The audience absolutely deserve a full refund.

July 31, 2012

QotD: The crony capitalist Olympics

Filed under: Britain, Government, Politics, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

The Olympics are a giant exercise in sports socialism — or crony capitalism, if you prefer — where the profits are privatized and the costs socialized. The games never pay for themselves because they are designed not to. That’s because the International Olympic Committee (an opaque “nongovernmental” bureaucracy made up of fat cats from various countries) pockets most of the revenue from sponsorships and media rights (allegedly to promote global sports), requiring the host country to pay the bulk of the costs. Among the very few times the games haven’t left a city swimming in red ink was after the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, when voters, having learned from Montreal’s experience, barred the use of public funds, forcing the IOC to use existing facilities and pick up most of the tab for new ones.

Even that’s far from fair. If anything, the Olympics should be compensating the host city for the hassle and inconvenience, not the other way around. The only reason they don’t is because the Cold War once stirred retrograde nationalistic passions, blinding the world to the ass-backwardness of the existing arrangement. Londoners are signaling that this can’t go on.

Shikha Dalmia, “Why London Is Yawning Over the Olympics: Have Western countries finally outgrown the sports socialism of the Olympic Games?”, Reason, 2012-07-31

New British tolerance: it’s still conform or be cast out

Filed under: Britain, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:01

Brendan O’Neill on the dangers of dissenting from the cult of tolerance:

Did you enjoy the Olympics opening ceremony? If you didn’t, it’s probably wise to keep it to yourself. After all, you don’t want to end up like Tory MP Aidan Burley, who has been denounced as “reprehensible”, “offensive” and even “incompatible with modern Britain” — wow — for having the temerity to tweet that he thought the ceremony was “leftie multicultural crap”. There is a profound irony at work here. The ceremony celebrated the openness and diversity of modern Britain and has been hailed as a wonderful spectacle of “inclusion”. Yet it seems our celebration of diversity does not extend to allowing any criticism of the ceremony itself; our inclusiveness does not mean we will include dissenting views on Danny Boyle’s vision of the New Britain. When it comes to the opening ceremony, you must conform and celebrate, or risk being cast out (of polite society).

The opening ceremony is speedily morphing into another “Diana moment”, into another instance when everyone is expected to kowtow before a new, unstuffy vision of Britain, and heaven help those who don’t. Following the death of Princess Diana, we were told that we had entered a post-traditional, emotionally-aware New Britain, and yet the expression of certain emotions — such as criticism of the cult of public mourning outside the various royal palaces — was frowned upon and censured.

July 29, 2012

British army dispatches troops to … fill empty seats at the Olympics?

Filed under: Britain, Military, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:47

I don’t want to turn the blog into an exercise in mocking the major international sporting event being held in a major English city, but this report from the Guardian can’t be missed:

Soldiers have been drafted in to fill empty seats at the London 2012 Olympics after prime blocks of seating at the Aquatics Centre and gymnastics arena went unused on the first day of competition.

Troops were despatched to the North Greenwich Arena this morning by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog), to take up seats left empty by accredited officials from Olympic and sporting federations, as well as some sponsors and members of the media. More troops, many of whom had their leave cancelled to provide emergency cover after the organisers failed to find enough security guards, will be issued with last-minute invites to take seats in venues when blocks of seats are found to be empty, the games organisers said this morning.

The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said on Saturday the empty seats were “very disappointing” and suggested they could be offered to members of the public. He said the matter was being looked at “very urgently”.

I guess giving the seats to members of the public would be too much of a security risk?

NBC’s Olympic coverage under fire

Filed under: Britain, Media, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:41

Billy Gallagher at TechCrunch explains why he’s recommending viewers not watch NBC:

Spoiler alert: Phelps and Lochte raced today. The results are all over Twitter. But the race won’t air on TV in America until tonight.

This is 2012, not 1996. NBC has put all of the events live online, provided you have a cable subscription, but won’t have them available recorded online and won’t air many events, including the most high-profile ones, until a primetime tape delay.

This isn’t a new strategy, just a dumb, outdated one.

Sums it up pretty well. We’ve already covered the failings of NBC (and the IOC) fairly extensively, but its a topic that bears repeating. Check out #nbcfail for a live (gasp, what’s that?) stream of people’s frustrations with the peacock network.

A brief critical analysis of Olympic merchandise

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Stephen Bayley – Founder of the Design Museum – gives the Olympics merchandise a critical mauling.

In ‘Rule Britannia: The Vice Guide to The Olympics’ VICE takes an in-depth look at the British public’s reaction to The Games coming to London this summer and the negative impact it’s having on certain people’s lives.

The six week festival promises to bring a a celebration of unity and sporting achievement, not to mention a huge cash injection to our beleaguered capital. VICE questions the real effects of The Games on a city as complex and tempestuous as London and discovers that they go much deeper, and murkier than the Olympics’ media spin-machine would have us believe.

H/T to Nick Packwood for the link.

July 28, 2012

Feschuk’s Olympic opening ceremony highlights

Filed under: Humour, Media, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:23

I didn’t watch the opening ceremonies, but I did enjoy Scott Feschuk’s twitter updates during the festivities. He’s collected some of them along with the appropriate photos for Maclean’s:

Clocking in at three hours and 45 minutes, the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Games featured many remarkable moments and tophats. Here’s a selection of just a few of the images that captivated the world when the world wasn’t busy asking, “Did they seriously just play a song by Frankie Goes to Hollywood?”

[. . .]

[. . .]

[. . .]

July 27, 2012

Bruce Arthur calls for moderation in regard to the London Olympics

Filed under: Britain, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:13

In the National Post, Bruce Arthur tries to encourage all of us, in spite of our memories of what British journalists were saying about the Vancouver Olympics, to avoid being nasty about the London games:

But perhaps we in Canada should restrain ourselves, as a nation. Perhaps we should take the higher road. That is, unless the higher road is crammed with traffic in this built-for-horses-and-carriage town. Or the tube is down again.

The Brits did not treat Canada kindly two years ago, it’s true. The Guardian said Vancouver could be the Worst Games Ever three days in, and they based the assessment on refunded snowboard tickets rather than on the preventable death of an athlete. The Guardian also called our glowing totem poles a collection of ice penises, and even the BBC announcer cocked an eyebrow, as it were. The Times of London called us cursed, while the Daily Mail mocked the escalation of the budget. They were, to be honest, kind of jerks about it.

But that doesn’t mean that Canadians should stoop to a similarly savage brand of mockery, beginning with the Opening Ceremony. It doesn’t mean we should make fun of the leaked details of the event, starting with children in hospital beds, which doesn’t seem terribly festive. It doesn’t mean we should make fun of the fact that Muse will apparently play, and even if they do not, that the official song of the Olympics by Muse is a grating, strutting, whining, overcompensatory sneer of a song.

If Boris wasn’t mayor of London

Filed under: Britain, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

Lawsmith imagines what Boris Johnson would write about the London Olympics “major international sporting event” in a “certain major city in the UK” if he were not mayor:

I can imagine his perfect article in this alternative history in my dreams. Written in the Spectator and littered with self-deprecation, references to dead or fictitious Greeks, Liverpool and wiff-waff, Boris would have danced across the pages as he gleefully excoriated the Labour administration for the absurd idea of inviting a bunch of prima donna athletes and bureaucrats, most of them foreign, to compete in an outdoor stadium during the coldest, wettest summer in British history.

He might have pointed out that all this would take place in Newham, a place not altogether unlike Portsmouth and, in any case, one most Londoners consider more alien than Paris, with among the highest incidence of robbery and assault in the entire city. He might have joyfully foretold the pain and suffering of millions of income taxpayers on account of the shut-down of major roads and TfL advising know-nothing tourists to hop the tube at rush hour to make the 10 AM events, and seriously questioned the wisdom of erecting a steel wall around Hyde Park for an entire summer before fouling it up beyond recognition.

In our alternative history he would have savaged, rather than prodded, the implementation of widespread censorship undertaken by a hit squad of intellectual property ninjas; he would have lamented the fact that our police were arresting “marginal” (i.e., possibly innocent) suspects – living, breathing, thinking people – on terrorism charges which they might not be able to prove. If he had really driven it home, he would have pointed out that, under normal circumstances, those arrests would never have been made. He would also have asked why nobody seems to care.

By this point, his oeuvre would have been the most hilarious political essay ever written. He would flay alive in full public view the pathetic, uncritical, fawning news-media industry which crafts its Olympic stories with all the creative flavour of an oak plank, their proxy world to escape from our own inadequacies where professional athletes become “heroes” (seriously, find a different word), washed-up “heroes” become “legends,” and civil liberties violations and government largesse are completely ignored.

July 26, 2012

The “international sporting event” in “the capital of the United Kingdom”

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

Dahlia Lithwick explains why we all need to be careful how we refer to a certain large organized sports extravaganza happening in a major city in England:

At the London Olympics, we’re seeing unprecedented restrictions on speech having anything to do with, erm, the Olympics. There are creepy new restrictions on journalists, with even nonsportswriters being told they should sign up with authorities.

Then there’s the London Olympic Games and Paralympics Games Act 2006. The law was originally aimed at preventing “over-commercialization” of the games, but it seems to have unloosed something of a Pandora’s box of speech suppression. Provisions triggering worries for protesters include sections regulating use of the Olympic symbol “in respect of advertising of any kind including in particular — (a) advertising of a non-commercial nature, and (b) announcements or notices of any kind.” The law further seems to authorize a “constable or enforcement officer” to “enter land or premises” where they believe such material is being produced. It also permits that such materials may be destroyed, and for the use of “reasonable force” to do so.

[. . .]

But it’s not just the Olympic rings that are being protected; it’s also Olympic words. As Nick Cohen recently observed, the “government has told the courts they may wish to take particular account of anyone using two or more words from what it calls ‘List A.’ ” Those words: Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, and twenty twelve. And woe betide anyone who takes a word from List A and marries it with one or more words from “List B”: Gold, Silver, Bronze, London, medals, sponsors, summer.

Spectators have been warned they may not “broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the Internet,” making uploading your video to your Facebook page a suspect activity. Be careful with your links to the official Olympic website as well.

July 24, 2012

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, welcomes you to the Olympic Games

Filed under: Britain, History, Humour, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:12

H/T to Nick Packwood for the link.

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