But then Olympics... hmmm well you can't say that I'm totally not interested in sports. At least I have played several of them but excelled at none. I mainly watch soccer, but for Olympics I watch several items due to influence from my father. I watch sports like Badminton, Diving, Table Tennis, Gymnastics and 100 meters Men's. I watch soccer too, but only when there's Arsenal or Arsenal players or I've bet on it.
Thanks for ruining your own fan-base Van Pu**y, where your Arsenal Bros now?
Now if you noticed, the sports that I've watched other than 100 meters Men's, the rest are dominated by 1 frigging country.
China.
Sorry Manluo, can't resist myself when I mention China.
I was wondering why as I watched what I watched and pondered, why is it that I hear the Chinese National Anthem all the time? Well partly because my father loves China and he knows more about China news than Singapore news thanks to Starhub Cable TV Phoenix Channel.
It's like Anime to Otaku, for uncles.
And since I have to kinda watch whatever Olympic events that he watches, I kinda grew up watching these events. I don't totally know all of them and how all of them work, but I just like can kinda appreciate them. Note, I'm not a BTSS (Bian Tai Shu Shu) just because I watch gymnastics. It's my father, not me. If you want to, call me a BTKK (Bian Tai Kor Kor) instead.
Now personally I have never been interested playing any of these sports except for Badminton. I tried Table Tennis and the balls just hates me, it flies around like nobody's business. Diving is out as all I can do is an atom bomb into the pool, doing Gymnastics will break the equipments, 100 meters men will end up like rolling for me. Lastly, I have stated before, I only watch soccer, and I only watch ARSENAL. So yeah, sports wise I suck, big time.
Regardless though, I still know certain aspects of the game and I know China deserves their gold medals. It bewilders me in why China can do so well in these sports and why other countries can't. You have the same training time, you have the same, if not better resources. Then why can't these countries win over China? Is it simply because China has a big population of 1.2 billion? Then India should be close to getting number 2 or 3, but normally it's USA. So in a sense, size of a country only matters to a certain extent. There must be a reason why 2 countries always dominate Olympics, China and USA.
Fear the freaking Panda goddamn it!!!
Now, let's look at things from a few prospective; Geographical, mentality, environment, biological and economical.
Firstly, if the country is like Antarctica, you can bet your ass they will never do good in beach volleyball. I mean the people will freeze to death. So in certain places, certain sports are definitely out. But then again for the summer Olympics, most of the sports are well do-able under room conditions, such as table tennis or badminton. So again there's no excuse for Egypt for example to suck in swimming.
However some countries do get a slight advantage. Ever wonder why countries like Kenya are able to produce very excellent runners? I've seen on Discovery once that certain countries have higher altitude. This makes the air up there thinner hence more difficult to run. For runners that live in these countries, they are faced with such conditions and are naturally trained in a more difficult environment. It's similar to how Lee in Naruto always fix himself to weights and stuff. He's already very good with them, you take out these "disadvantages", they become superb and shit happens.
That's what happens when you Kek Sai for too long.
So yes, where you live makes a difference ultimately. No doubt slight, but it still does.
Next, mentality.
What kind of mentality does sportsman have? To be frank I have no frigging idea cause I'm in no ways a sportsman. But I kinda have an idea that you will push yourself beyond your own pain for that eternal glory kinda thingy. Its like me running 2.4km for IPPT. Few seconds left and I'm free from the pain of RT. So I'll freaking push myself to the state of even vomiting just to escape the time wasting RT. Take that kinda mentality magnify it by 10000000000x and there you get Olympics.
Then you look at the mentality of China. These people get scouted since young and leave their family for their country's glory. They sacrifice more than half of their prime years learning and mastering just this one sport in Olympics. It's no wonder China can get so much gold medals. Just read the many stories and lifes of China's sportsman, I mean you won't get a praise from the country unless you get world no.1. What kind of sadistic mentality are they setting, dictatorship?
You don't get recognition for being anything other than no.1. You sacrifice a whole bunch of your youth away and you get nothing but just 1 skill of that sports. After you get old? What happens? Country doesn't want you and throw you away? With that 1 skill of yours it would not be enough to survive in society. It's no wonder they leave China for other countries like Singapore where they become rich but strangely looked down upon by the locals. Hmmmmmm...
They got it wrong, I should play in the men's, not women's.
This kind of all or nothing mentality not only gets them going, it forces them to go. Naturally they'll get no.1. So mentality understandable plays a big part.
Ok, then what about the environment you invest your sports in? Good training area? Good facilities? Clean toilets, very important by the way. Good facilities are definitely important, but to what extent? Singapore have very good training facilities for people, but our sports suck while some poorer countries without the so-called state-of-the-art equipments can still get number 1. So definitely environment is only good for up to a certain extent.
I could have placed more disgusting photos but that will harm my viewership.
The biological aspect of sports is getting hazy. In the past, Russian rules gymnastics, South America in most types of balls, the black Americans and Africans getting running gold, USA and Angmoh for swimming and diving and the chinese dominating badminton and table tennis. But now... it's a different ball game. Everyone seems to be winning something they don't seem to win in the past. Although some things still don't change like you see all Jamaicans winning the sprinting and USA conquering the swimming, but you see upstarts from other countries, notably China's Sun Yang huge win in the swimming. And now Chinese and Japan starting to show power in gymnastics, volleyball etc. Just look at the recent scorings and you can see the demographic changing. But I doubt this changes much.
I believe in the end, some "borned" advantages looms amongst athletics. Just look at the running competition it's always some black dude (RACIST~!!~) getting tops. It's amazing actually. This got me thinking that maybe if Singapore wanna win some athletics tops, we should get our bangla to start running.
MLMLWM
Last but not least, economically... which I believe makes no difference into achieving greatness in sports. How rich or how poor a country is not an excuse for anyone to be a great sportsman. Yes I agree in life, when situation handles you with money issues, you are unable to commit to being a sportsman and to represent your country, train and win medals. But then again, what's the whole thing about being a sportsman? As corny as it sounds, I believe that if you are out to be a sportsman, its to excel in your trade, to push for the highest level possible. Competitions are only an instrument to push out that excellence in a faster accelerated manner.
In the end, its still possible for people to become wonderful sportsman, regardless whether you're in the Olympics or not. There's so many differences in this world it's almost impossible to make any contest a "fair" contest at all. Ultimately, the biggest competition is inside you and that's what I believe every sportsman should believe in.
By the way, I'm serious PAP, banglas have more means other than throwing rubbish.
2 comments:
hey laohan,
ah moi here. I must I'm always entertained by your posts. I guess I should continue blogging too but I ain't got no funny shit like yours xD
anyway, I want to point out something in your post. You mentioned that a country's economic power doesn't play a role in sportsmanship. Actually, it does. Most economically strong countries or rich countries do not reward their delegates as well as the poor countries (with China and US as exceptions, of course). That is why Singapore never wins lol. The incentive for winning is too low. If our national player gets a gold medal, he'll probably only get like what, $500,000? Compared to developing countries like Thailand, which reward their winners with a house or a plot of land. For developing countries, international recognition and esteem is much more important to them than to developed countries. So that's why they reward more and their sportsmen work harder.
I think it all boils down to incentives. Sports is tough shit and without very good incentives (money, fame, recognition, etc), it's very difficult to keep it going. US sportsmen get pretty good incentives. They get praised as national heroes, get paid good money and probably lots of sponsors too. You hardly see that coming for our national players. Who would want to sponsor a bunch of nobodies from a land people hardly even know?
For China it's a slightly different story... they use disincentives lol, which I'm sure you already know. But then again, their no. 1s get rewarded much more than our no 1s, since they do suffer a lot after all. They get Ferraris, stylish apartments, sponsors and VIP access to clubs too. None of which, again, sadly, our hardworking local players will ever get.
So yeah, mentality is important, and so is the environment that shapes it. ^^
Yeah I agree on your part of economics and how rich a country is affect on how they "reward" the sportsman. However is there a real trend that the poorer countries pay their athletics better? I do not know how different countries pay their sportsman. I only know SG pays a cool $1mil, but that's like all to it... and I think $1mil SGD is enuff to buy land in Thailand ba? :x
I feel that countries reward their sportsmen, in a seemingly random fashion. It's almost like how important a country regard the Olympics to be. For example India, I don't know how they reward their sportsman, more curry?? India's economy is not really rich, but they don't reward their sportsman well if I'm not wrong.
Regardless, thanks for the comment hahhaa, nice to know still got people read what i write. Shiok ah.
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