In my unqualified opinion the old lady of women's gymnastics, Ellie Black at 28, had the most artistic floor routine, but I'm very suggestible and the commentators referred to it as a powerful comeback story so there you have it. Sold. Ellie Black for MY gold. Also she's Canadian and I get very nationalistic during the Olympics.
Otherwise, I'm a citizen of the world as tasked to us by Justin Trudeau's old man, Pierre.
Gymnastics in my day used to be dominated by the Russians, and I remember Seventeen magazine featuring beauty makeovers of Olga Korbut and the rest of the team. It was so exciting. I poured over that issue, could hardly wait for it to come out.
Seventeen also featured a column by Susan Ford. I remember one in which she wrote about Jack? dodging the Secret Service to go out on the town. I wonder. Did she really write it, do you think? It seemed real.
Just mentioning Olga Korbut I wonder if that's when the Iron Curtain started to part. Americans loved her. Everybody did. We all wanted her to win gold at the Olympics. I remember Jim McKay of NBC? crying when she fell during her unevens? routine. She was actually 17 but looked younger, especially alongside her teammates, who were credited with more grace and artistic expression.
Olga Korbut's acrobatic ability changed gymnastics, and while some would say not for the better, I think it was inevitable, all the way to Simone Biles, who is simply spectacular.
The Soviet Union used to handpick little girls to train as gymnasts based on their body types. I remember too the controversy of their athletes being supported entirely by the state, while ours weren't, and how unfair it was. It really was and yet our athletes still managed to compete against the Russians, often enough winning, too.
Years after Olga Korbut starred at the 1972 Olympics she was living and working in the US, coaching gymnastics, and got picked up for shoplifting. I remember reading about it and feeling bad for her. Also old. This was years ago.
A former Facebook friend was part of the pile on of Simone Biles during the Pandemic Olympics in Tokyo (when she decided against competing due to how she was feeling). I told him it was racist and he should stay out of it but he argued it wasn't and doubled down instead.
He'd convinced himself she was just afraid she wouldn't win, so rather than lose, she quit. I said no he was reacting to the fact she's black and a superstar, look around at your co-arguers, I said, other white male Conservatives who couldn't give a rat's ass about gymnastics suddenly all in with concern for its future.
Gawd he was frustrating.
He's not here to see it but no one is questioning she's the best gymnast in the world now, maybe ever, and at 27. Also 4'8", all muscle, no torso, so kind of an unfair head start, physically, although I suppose those early years in foster care even out any natural advantages she may have.
Intersex people occur in the world population at about the same rate as redheads.
I birthed one of those, a redhead, although she's darkened considerably and you wouldn't know to see her now she's actually one of that rarefied breed.
I don't know how often a runner like Usain Bolt shows up but other men couldn't come close to beating him until I guess someone did or he retired. I haven't kept abreast of men's track after Donovan Bailey. I got tired of the hype, as if the men's 100 metres was all that mattered and everybody else was an also-ran, although I hope Andre wins gold. I like his attitude, as in, he's not an arrogant jerk.
I don't know where Gloria Steinem stands on women being on the front lines of the army but she used to be opposed, given the misogyny not just within our armies, but societies at large. I believe she updated her public position due to women ourselves wanting to be on the front lines, but I imagine she maintains her private reservations. I fully support women being on the front lines and always did, but I respect Gloria's reservations back in the day. She's a much better Feminist than I can ever hope to be.
Easy for her, of course. She was 80 or something when she got married to a man and she doesn't have kids. I think it takes a single childless woman to be the best Feminist. The rest of us get compromised along the way in our roles as wives and mothers.
Once I accused my former Facebook friend, who was sympathetic to the men's rights politics of the Right, of resenting women because he wanted to be one, that he was jealous, while also blaming us for "male pain" as he put it. I must have shocked him because he didn't argue, even saying maybe he was.
I think it's at the core of the new Conservatism, resentment, jealousy, blame, men looking at women and seeing us enjoying liberal democracy, the freedom to not get married, not have kids, invade male-only domains like the army and boxing, also medicine, law, and engineering, and instead of celebrating with us, they want the state to end the party, send us home, no more independence allowed.
Let us pray.
Unpopular? opinion alert: I don't think there should even be such a thing as women's boxing. I'm certainly not interested in watching it, but I'm not interested in watching men's boxing either. I don't consider it to be an advance in Feminism at all, women's boxing. On the other hand, I consider it an advance in Feminism that men's gymnastics is enjoying a bit of a moment. I know I never paid it much attention before but this go 'round I was riveted.
I look back on my childhood Olympic dreams, dreams that powered my nightly runs and saw me through those lonely pre-teen and teen years before I found a tribe and started having fun, and I'm glad I didn't know then what I know now, which is that if I'd lived in the Soviet Union back in the day, I wouldn't have stood a chance of being selected by the state for track or gymnastics or even swimming, because I don't have the body type to excel at athletics.
I also would've probably died of homesickness, anyway, one famous achievement of my youth being I cried so much at overnight camp I had the orphans from Sudbury crying they wanted to go home too.
The dedication it must take to get to the Olympics I can't imagine but every time they roll around I love how politics is eclipsed by performance and it becomes all about the athletes, athletic achievement, and a handful of human beings doing what the rest of us can barely imagine is even possible.
Not fair at all, any of it, but I still celebrate it every time.😀
