Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

 The Tokyo Olympic games are over.  I have to give credit to the Japanese for hosting these games under terrible situation.  There were many who felt that the games should not be played.   I was borderline on that.  But Japan pulled it off and even though there were some increased in COVID cases, no great surge occurred.  For that we can all breathe a sigh of relief.  Now for some random thoughts on the games.

I was wrong about the women's soccer team and the men's basketball team.  I didn't think that the women would lose after that first game debacle.  Over the years they have been so much better than other teams and they have the best players available, unlike the men's basketball team which had some non all stars on the team.  But age may be catching up with the women.  Rest of the world may be also.

I was at least right about Kevin Durant needing to play better.  And did he ever!  He was the obvious MVP and the reason the U.S. won the gold medal.  He may be the GOAT of U.S. Olympic basketball.  I was also right about the lack of big men almost cost them.  Gobert dominated inside against them.  If he was a better scorer, we would have been in trouble.  What if we have to face someone like Jokic next time?  We have the best athletes by far but we still need some big men.

I was almost right about Doncic dominating.  He kind of ran out of gas the last two games after shouldering too much of the load to get Slovenia into the semifinals.  If he had taken the last shot against France instead of passing off, they could very well have been in the finals.

Good stories about couple of Asian Americans.  Everybody knows about Sunisa Lee who won the all around in gymnastics after Simone Biles dropped out.  There must have been great pressure on her going from number two to number one all of a sudden.  She is Hmong from the Twin cities.  My daughter went to college there and I remember seeing a lot of Hmong and Somalia refugees who settled there.  Minnesota has a history of taking in people from other countries.  Good to see spotlight on them.

Another Asian American is Jordan Windle who placed 6th in platform diving.  He was a Cambodia orphan who was adopted by a single gay man.  Jordan's father was rejected many times trying to adopt because of his status.  He turned out to be a great father as Jordan recalled how his father supported him all these years and saved him when he was only 16 lbs at two years old!

Simone Biles have put mental health at the front of the conversation which is great.  But the demonstrations expected at the games was practically non existent.  I guess given the pandemic hanging over everybody, nobody feel like protesting.

There were some new games to increase the interests of young people.  So skateboarding, surfing and sports climbing were added.  These all seem like sports for rich westerners.  I think we should find some sports that people in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America are playing.  I doubt that would happen because the people in charge want to increase the medal counts of rich countries and increase the tv ratings in rich countries as well.

I am sure I will think of something else to rant about but I am sure others can also.  On a lighter note, I wonder if people looking at the medal standings are thinking that Taiwan won a lot more medals than expected.  That is because Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China or ROC.  I see ROC has won a lot of medals.  But turns out it is the Russian Olympic Committee, not Taiwan.  This is all stupid if the Russia is banned but their athletes can compete under ROC,  Wasn't the ROC complicit in the cheating in the first place?  Did they sing the ROC anthem when an athlete win the gold or did they sing the Russian national anthem?