Olympic girl seen but not heard - CNN.com

BEIJING, China (CNN) — A little girl and her song captivated millions of viewers during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. But what they saw was not what they heard.

Games organizers confirm that Lin Miaoke [above right], who performed “Ode to the Motherland” as China’s flag was paraded Friday into Beijing’s National Stadium, was not singing at all.

Lin was lip-syncing to the sound of another girl, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi [above left], who was heard but not seen, apparently because she was deemed not cute enough.

“The reason was for the national interest,” said Chen Qigang, the ceremony’s musical director, in a state radio interview. “The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression. … Lin Miaoke is excellent in those aspects.”

From the Opening Ceremony, where one little girl was put on display, while another provided the voice behind the scenes, to the women’s gymnastics team, where the “16 year-old” gymnasts still have their baby teeth (despite what their passports indicate), the Chinese propaganda machine is out in full force.

But what do you expect when their stated purpose is to beat the American teams in the medal count. The Chinese are certainly outdistancing the United States in gold medals, but thus far, the overall medal count is fairly close.

Despite the lofty ideals, cheating always happens at the Olympics … but I would never have suspected it on such a grand scale … falsifying documents, lip-syncing … you have to wonder if there will be any doping controversies popping up for either the Chinese or for the Americans. If any Americans are busted for doping, you know that the American propaganda machine will also turn out to try to show that the American Olympians are somehow being framed by the Chinese.

Like many, I am an Olympics junkie … but I’m starting to get jaded by the politics. It’s almost as bad as cycling’s brouhaha between the UCI and Amaury Sports Organisation (the organizers of the Tour de France).

UCI fury as Tour put under French jurisdiction

PARIS (AFP) - The International Cycling Union (UCI) have threatened sanctions against riders and teams competing in this year’s Tour de France after organisers announced Tuesday that the race will take place under the jurisdiction of the French Cycling Federation (FFC).

The decision follows a long-running dispute between the two bodies which stems from whether race organisers including ASO (Amaury Sport Organisation), who organise the Tour de France, or the sport’s governing body, the UCI, have the final say over who rides in their races.

As with the Paris-Nice race earlier this year, the 2008 Tour will be organised under the authority of the FFC with the country’s anti-doping agency AFLD in charge of doping controls.

“We have asked the FFC that the Tour be organised under their authority. The AFLD will therefore be in charge of the doping tests before and during the race,” Tour de France race director Christian Prudhomme said.

The UCI, meanwhile, slammed the move as “a bad decision for cycling” and judged it as “extremely regrettable for the sport and the unity of the cycling family”.

“It is not correct that ASO leaders, backed by the FFC, preferred to make the announcement during a press conference before warning the international federation beforehand,” the UCI said in a statement.

“It constitutes additional evidence of the ASO’s wish to no longer take into account the authority of the UCI concerning international cycling.”

And they warned that riders and teams could face sanctions for competing in a race being run outside the UCI authority.

“Riders and teams by competing will expose themselves to sanctions through the fault of ASO leaders,” the UCI said.

So, UCI … are you going to ban 200 professional cyclists from racing in events that ARE on the UCI calendar, thus depriving those races of the very cyclists that make them a success? Do you not realize that ASO actually has the power here?

If the UCI sanctions cyclists, more races will seek sanctioning from national federations, rather than from the UCI; because the races want riders.

The UCI is becoming increasingly irrelevant … and carrying through on a threat like this will do your cause more harm than good.

Unfortunately, until the riders get involved, there’s not going to be a resolution.

Here’s a scenario. All the teams that have been invited start the Tour. The UCI announces sanctions mid-way through the race.

What should the riders do? Do they strike against ASO, backing the UCI, and refusing to race? Or do they continue to ride, backing the organisers’ rights to invite whom they choose? Regardless, unless the teams act unanimously, the issue is not going to be resolved.

Multiple (and competing) governing bodies will emerge. Cycling will lose its status as an Olympic sport. More sponsorship dollars will flow away from the sport … and we can all get back to just riding our bikes.

Great interview in the Marin Independent-Journal today with Davis Phinney, 1984 Olympic cyclist, 2-time Tour de France stage winner, and America’s winningest cyclist.

Cycling in Marin: Champion cyclist regains control of his life in battle with Parkinson’s

IF you’re looking for minor miracles, look no further than Davis Phinney.

For most of the past three weeks, this champion cyclist, a guy who has won 328 races in his life, including two stages of the Tour de France, has been sitting in Tiburon. And waiting. Waiting for a small miracle.

On Friday, that miracle arrived.

At age 48, Phinney has been in an eight-year fight for his life. He has Parkinson’s, the insidious disease that causes uncontrollable quaking and shaking.

Click to read the entire article.

Bob Cullinan, who wrote the article, is also the guy behind CycleTo.com.

Video excerpts from the interview are available as well.

And then go donate to the Davis Phinney Foundation, to help the fight against Parkinson’s Disease. That would be the Big Ring thing to do.

China doctors the news of Olympic torch relay

The English-language China Daily newspaper described London’s upheaval in the streets as “disruptions by a few Tibetan separatists and their supporters.” In the first reports from Paris by the state-run Xinhua news agency, the journalist cited “technical difficulties” as the reason the torch was extinguished and carried on a bus rather than by someone on foot.

A day later, a spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee of the Olympics told a hastily called news conference that though the relay had been disrupted, China intended to complete the longest torch run in the history of the Games.

Dissenting voices have been silenced even more than usual, so it’s even tougher than in normal times to gauge popular opinion. But censorship in China begins early and political debate is limited, so to many the torch demonstrations seem like overblown personal attacks against Chinese people, not just criticism of their government.

Sophie Richardson, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said the dangers of China’s heavy-handed censorship are evident.

“The downside of suppressing free information and substituting propaganda is quite clear, be it about toxic toys or repressed ethnic minorities - the eventual eruption is far worse than it might have been had it been dealt with openly,” Richardson said.

“As long as China blocks the free flow of information, it is unreliable as a trading partner, as a strategic partner or as a ‘responsible power.’”

I’ve gotten a fair number of spam comments professing to be from people telling me “I know nothing about China”, and that “Tibetans, even the Dalai Lama” don’t want their freedom.

I might believe some of the comments are legit if I didn’t get the same comment 3 times in an hour from same IP address (albeit with different email addresses, and slightly different spelling).

Look … I’m not anti-Chinese. I’ve got nothing against the Chinese people; but the people aren’t the government, and it’s the government’s policies that are causing problems.

BTW, spam-commenters … I don’t like the US government right now either … but that doesn’t make me an anti-American, either.

It’s called free expression. Maybe someday the Chinese government will decide to allow the Chinese (and Tibetan) citizenry a chance to give it a try.

Protesters building steam in S.F.

On the day before the Olympic torch was to be carried along the citys waterfront, hundreds of protesters took to the streets today to rally support for freedom in Tibet and to decry the Peoples Republic of China rule there.

The roving demonstration moved from United Nations Plaza to City Hall to the Chinese Consulate at Geary Boulevard and Laguna Street in the Western Addition. The consulate building was protected by dozens of San Francisco police officers.

The protesters remained peaceful throughout the day, waving the colorful Tibetan flag, singing the Tibetan national anthem and chanting slogans denouncing China. They watched the lighting of the Tibetan Freedom Torch and cheered as caged white doves were released into the sky.

The gathering was timed to coincide with the appearance of the Olympic Torch, which is scheduled to make its only North American appearance in San Francisco Wednesday as part of a five-continent relay leading up to the Summer Games in Beijing.

“This is not about disrupting the torch-bearers. This is about China using the torch for political purposes and we using it right back,” Lhadon Tethong, executive director if Students for a Free Tibet, said through a bullhorn in front of the Chinese Consulate.

Protesters, upset with Chinas policies in Tibet, Sudan and with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, have disrupted the relay in Athens, London and Paris. San Francisco officials also are bracing for demonstrations by China critics and counterdemonstrations by pro-China supporters.

Previous posts on this blog illustrate what I feel the athletes should do when it comes to the Beijing Olympics, but all of the news about the protests surrounding the torch made me wonder how the whole torch carrying thing came about.

So I do what many people do when confronted with one of those odd questions … what is the history of the Olympic Torch relay?

Well … according to a 2004 article in the New York Times, the torch relay was introduced by none other than Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, as part of his Nazi propaganda machine.

According to the London Times:

The torch relay is a celebration of the ancient fires that burnt through the original Olympiads but the idea of carrying the flame from Olympia to the host city each year was invented by the organisers of the 1936 Berlin Games.

The relay, captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s film, “Olympia”, was part of the Nazi propaganda machine’s attempt to add myth and mystique to Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.

Surprisingly, the use of the Olympic rings, originally adopted as a symbol of the Games at the 1914 Olympic Congress prior to the cancelled 1916 Olympic Games, were also widely promoted by Riefenstuhl’s film (when she had the rings carved in stone at Delphi).

Joy.

Perhaps it’s a good idea that the torch was extinguished not once, but twice by the French, and the American leg of the journey tomorrow (Wednesday) in San Francisco may actually be cancelled because of the protests.

It certainly seems fitting that the Chinese government has promoted the this year’s relay as a Journey of Harmony … but it’s too bad their harmonic convergence seems to be more in line with with the powers of oppression and genocide, rather than truly of peace.

… to skip this year’s Olympics in Beijing.

Beijing pollution risky for endurance athletes

BEIJING (Reuters) - Endurance events at the Beijing Olympics could pose a health risk if they are staged on heavily polluted days, the International Olympic Committee said on Wednesday, although it was prepared to reschedule such events.

Hein Verbruggen, chairman of the IOC coordination commission, said there was a small chance of athletes suffering some damage to their health if they took part in events lasting longer than an hour, such as the marathon and cycling road races.

Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the world and, despite a 120 billion yuan ($17.12 billion) clean-up over the last decade, air quality remains a concern for many athletes coming to the Olympics, already a lightning rod for rights protests worldwide.

Last week I posted an entry supporting a boycott of the opening ceremony at the Olympic Games. Thor Hushovd listened. Okay, maybe not to me, but the idea is taking hold amongst athletes.

VeloNews | Hushovd considers opening ceremony boycott

Crédit Agricole’s ace sprinter Thor Hushovd says he is prepared to boycott the opening ceremony to the Beijing Olympics in August to protest Chinese repression in Tibet.

“We sports people do not have any particular responsibility to take a stance over what is happening in China,” he told Norway’s Faedrelandsvennen newspaper.

“But all the same we can have some influence by snubbing the opening ceremony in Beijing. That would be a valid form of protest and I am prepared to do it,” Hushovd said. “However, from there to boycotting the Games entirely is a huge step.”

Now, in my world, this is a huge thing … but in the grand scheme, cycling is not a major sport, at least not in the United States; as evidenced by the slim amount of television coverage it gets from NBC; and as Hushovd is a Norwegian, it’s likely to make little impact. But if Hushovd’s decision can start affecting other cyclists from other nations, and if those nations’ cyclists can inspire their compatriots participating in other sports, then maybe, just maybe the impact can be felt.

We need more athletes to step up and speak. In the United States, it will take a vocal stand by the stars of Swimming, Track & Field, and Gymnastics. Unfortunately, I don’t know who they are … is Amanda Beard still swimming?