Sth that worths for thinking about

29 Aug 2008

Been searching for a while, been wanting for a while, now I'm back to where I was. The longer I live, the more I understand how things won't fall in line with my wishes, how I have to be patient and how lucky I am to have someone to tell me I'm the best when I have doubts of myself. Life is interesting, not good or bad, but interesting, cos it's the mix of good, bad and things that you even don't know what it will turn out. The charm of living is not knowing, not knowing what you will end up and where your next stop is.

 

Olympics is over. When China is celebrating its absolute dominance in medal tally with worries of how to maintain it in London, when States is not quite used to be the second and trying hard with excuses to defend itself and promises in next game, when the rest of world is either happy or sad with the medals they got and those they had planned but failed to get, how many medals a nation won in the game is a big fuss afterall. But should it have to be this way, I wonder. An article "Rice was nice, but let's think twice about the price" makes me wonder even more.

 

Let's put in this way, no matter what size a nation's population is, it's big enough for each nation to find some individuals who are naturaly better body built than others to be trained to win medals in Olympics. What makes difference is the amount a nation chose to fund to train their athletes. There's nothing wrong that people derive pride from their national sporting achievements, but if it's the only source of pride people has about their country or it's important enough to make politicians keep raising fund that could be otherwise used on community sport for public health benifits on medal training for more glory in Olympics, a far bigger crisis is in the nation than in medal tally.

 

Australia has Rice to win three gold medals, but aussies in general got fatter than ever; China is thrilled by the first ever gold medal in women swimming, but millions Chinese swam first time in their twenties or even older; America has super fish Phelps and is upset for 110 (only?) medals they won, but the massive body mess index of its populace is never a concern to anyone.

 

On the other hand, Canada is only ranked 19th in medal tally with 3 golds out of more than 33-million population, but Canadians have a higher life expenctancy than most countries and "the biggest source of pride to Canadians in 2004 was not sport but 'the fair and equal treatment of all groups' in society". The reason of Canada's 3 gold medals in this game is not because their athletes are less superior than their competitors, but Canadian government chose to fund on commnity sport to encourage mass participation over on its elite athletes. Do you think Canadians are shamed of the absence of their nation in the top seats of medal tally, or pround of having a clever and healthy nation that they can benefit from?

 

Sth that worths for thinking about.