Too Absent Herald

I won’t even watch the women’s finals tonight. The commentary has been so lopsided you would think it was scripted by Faux News. I’ll have to look forward to the individual event finals and hope that NBC has budgeted a certain amount of time so that they would have to show Kozich (UKR)or even, if her game is on, this woman.

Evgenia Kuznetsova (BUL):

Zhenya’s been around since ‘88, but she was buried in the soviet team. For Bulgaria, now, it seems she hasn’t had the coaching, because when she is on, as in the 2001 Swiss cup (pic), no one has a better balance between strength and grace. (This is the problem I have with the American team, and with all the American teams since Shannon Miller (a little): There’s no individuality. Maybe I’m wrong, and they are going to change for the individuals, but no one is risking anything out there).

Then, there is the look. I don’t have a picture, but you’d have to go back to Aurelia Dobre (ROM) who, at times, could look like Audrey Hepuburn.

Perhaps only few (Musgrove, Vail, Gammon, and Battles) will get this, but Kuznetsova looks like the girl that works at the Steak Escape or Sbarro’s. The one you swoon over as you order more than you can eat. And you wonder how she can keep her complexion clear while working there; – though she most certainly doesn’t eat any of that greasy slop. And then you fall for her again, in the car, afterwards, when you realize that fact.
And you spin fantasies out into some future where that integrity and sharpness of wit will be an anchor; and you imagine some far distant cocktail party when, while unwillingly basking in the praise for some weak book you dashed off, you will raise your eyes above the swarm and, finding her eyes, you know she has been guarding you all evening. And you will insist to each person that all your functional talent is due entirely to her grace. And you wonder, too, how you can get “integrity” and “wit” from a ponytail and the fact that she can make a steak sandwich…

Yeah, all that, and she can probably bend a chrome fender around your neck. She’s low in the rankings, I don’t know if she’ll even make the individuals. But you should catch her, when you can.

I don’t know any better way to start this:

1984 was a joke, okay? 1980 was unfair, of course, because the USA was not present. But an archived article on Sports Illustrated’s site makes the claim tha Mary Lou Retton would have done just as well in the all-around even if the Soviet team had been present. In my best imitation of Biz Markie, I have to say: “Tsk. . . C’mon, I’m not even goin’ for it.”:

First, let’s review some magic moments:

The first “10″ was scored by Nadia Comenice for her Uneven bar routine at the 1976 Montreal (why?) games. Beside the remarkable aspect of a Romanian beating the Soviet favorite, Turishcheva, there is this: The scoreboard only had three digits. Nadia’s score was reflected in lights simply as “1.00″ because a ten could not be displayed. Comenice’s A-A score was 79.275. (out of 80, possible).

Now I’ll jump back to Korbut. Turishcheva was the favorite, and did win. But nothing can match the uneven-bar routine by Korbut. Of course, one wonders what it would have seemed like, there.

Digression: One of the remarkable things discovered by the media by Korbut’s routine is that the home viewers could be educated as to what is good, in general, about a routine. Simply looking for evenness and straightness of form (and fluidity on the floor) could give the TV viewer something to gauge. Unfortunately, and as usual, TV has gone too far in its rush for “videobytes.” The dismount has become the over-referenced factor. As a result, often one gets to see only the end of routines.

If you looked at only Nadia’s or Olga Korbut’s dismount, you would never understand the value of the points. Looking at her routine, even now, it outshines many of the past 12 years in intensity, form and skill.

Another important set of points to be made: Turishcheva won the all-around in 1972. Korbut was seventh. Korbut only got a silver on the bars with a 9.6. This, for a routine that included a standing back-flip from the top bar. This move is not even allowed today.

Jim McKay: Has that been done before?
Announcer: Not by any human,…

Frankly, Korbut raised the bar. Her routines made it necessary to have the bars padded (instead of simply wood) and have mats under the bars (there were none, previously). This begs the question: Was Comenice’s bar routine better? The answer points to a split in how you view the event; and it is a division which continues, now. Korbut was 17 years old; 4 feet, eleven inches tall. Comenice measured roughly the same, but her routines gave the appearance of length. Technical flawlessness gave way to a more aesthetic viewpoint, I think. Nadia Comenice’s routine in Montreal seems to last twice as long as Korbut’s.

Here’s another way: Over the past three days I have watched both routines a number of times, and showed them to a number of people. My own, and others’ reactions, summed up in first descriptive utterances, remain constant.

Korbut’s routine is: “Insane, unbelievable.”

Comenice’s is: “Amazing, perfect.”

That’s the difference, for me. And that is why my favorite gymnasts, of my own Olympic viewing history, are Elena Shushunova and Svetlana Boguinskaia. To be discussed tomorrow.

By the way: Comenice got a 79.275 in 1976 for the all-around Gold.

Retton, in ‘84, got a 79.175.

Shushunova, in 1988, got 79.662. Scoring has been changed since.

I don’t know if I can claim to have been born before G. Gordon Liddy got his job (nor whether that is a point of pride or not), but I do have the misfortune of only becoming aware of the Olympics, truly, by the time of the 1980 Games. 1972 only became important, for me, later.

Along with remembering when the Afghan mujahide’en were being trained by the CIA and fed by American canned goods, I have to remember the Olympics as being used as a political tool. This has to be one of the lowest points of the Cold War (McCarthyism is excepted only as it and blacklists are a low for humanity).

All I remember from the games are news reports about how the Soviets were opening giant doors in the stadium to “blind” some track contestants with sunlight. . . I didn’t realize how hilarious that is until I just typed it.

But it’s not hilarious, is it? Not when milk-trucks can be blown up by F-15s and have the film sold to the press as “news,” or when a main source of CIA intel is being tried for fraud by the people he ostensibly wanted to “liberate.”

For the record, I saw the Olympic Stadium in Moscow nine years later. Not that I would put myself at the eagle-eyed level of a U.N. Inspector, but I didn’t see any special doors. Nor could I understand how a door at ground level could affect anything.

I’m looking into the Moscow games, now, in an attempt to reconstruct my own past. Perhaps there is some clue, there, that would explain my devotion to Soviet Olympic competition since then. For some reason, I have always been a champion of the underdog, the outsider.

The problem is, the Soviets, while portrayed as the outlanders, are rarely the underdogs; especially when it comes to gymnastics, my personal favorite. I have thought that this attraction was due to a contrarian streak; a desire to go against the grain. In this case the “grain” is the growl of “U.S.A., U.S.A.”

There is something to this, but I don’t know that it can be categorical. After all, I grew up 80 miles from Pittsburgh. In the 1970s for goodness sakes! And who was my favorite football team? The Miami Dolphins.

Why? Why would I forsake the glory that could have been mine? I could have terrified people from coast to coast by the simple act of pulling from my back pocket the dreaded Terrible Towel!

Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, Joe Greene, Donnie frickin’ Shell, man. Blier? God! Do you know what the colors on the STEEL insignia stand for? The materials used to produce steel. Yellow for coal, Orange for ore, and Blue for steel scrap.

Steel Scrap. Jesus. What was I thinking? But they won. All the time. And in my own defense I swear that I never liked the Cowboys. I just liked aqua blue, and Bob Griese, and it was a distant team. So with the Soviets, the distance and mystery probably played a part.

Again, I cannot underestimate the distaste for chanting. The American news at the time didn’t actively play down the Sovs, and I’m not saying that I supported the incursion into Afghanistan. As an American, I could never support the invasion of a nation which…. oh, never mind.

Perhaps there is nothing to it. Perhaps it is only humility. Perhaps the fact that I couldn’t drive meant that I didn’t detest Jimmy Carter, and didn’t feel like we needed a “new morning in America.”

Facing the Athens Games, and putting aside worry for a moment or two, here is what I want, and get, each time from the Olympics: Spirit. No matter how much oozing honey and treacle is poured by TV “touch-pieces” over the sharp muscular edges of athleticism, one sees the spirit, raw. Raw, I think, because it does no good to read about it. Not much, anyway.

Let me put it another way: the only sports writing I have ever enjoyed is good baseball writing. There’s a way to put together baseball achievements that seems to be more powerful (in good prose) than simply describing “total yards rushing.” And have you ever read a description of a floor routine? It looks like a Bridge Column. With the Olympics, then, I give up, and watch. And when I cannot watch, I gather pictures. Icons.

Because of this feeling, I am most drawn to “core” events like track. I exclude even sports I should, by rights, have some feel for. I’ve been in too many volleyball tournaments to think there is much going on besides tearing up hotel rooms, smoking pot, and stealing Walkmans (don’t ask).

I know that gymnastics doesn’t come to mind along with core events, but, man, there’s sometimes enough drama there that even Tim McCarver would shut-up. And I’m not talking about Kerri Strug somehow redeeming American Independence or whatever she did (just wait until I get to 1984).

There are a few people whose careers I followed as a teen. And following the career of a Soviet-bloc gymnast in the 1980s was no easy task, okay? So I’m going to dig them up, here, and write about them. Of course I’ll throw in some others (Bubka, Bubka, Bubka), and some I never truly saw (Korbut), but who, if I had to make a compilation of images that are touchstones for me, would be stars.

Enjoy, because “swifter, higher, stronger” is generally good, and it doesn’t involve grinding puppies.

*So I was going to start with an aside about The Golden Bough, but it turned into an entry. Surprise, surprise. Try living with me. . . for an hour.

In the discussion of Magic practices still held around the world, Frazer describes the actions taken in Sub-Saharan Africa when a child is born in November. The child is deemed to be in for sadness in life (my copy is packed, and I cannot look up the circumstance, I think it has to do with the rainy season). One of the remedies for this “fact” is for the parent to shake the lid of a steaming pot, scattering drops around the house. This is an example of “sympathetic magic,” like Tom Sawyer’s plan to put half a pea on his wart, and bury the other half at a crossroads. The two parts will, naturally, move to rejoin, thus removing the wart.

On the Olympiad:

I. Prelude Heroes and Hero-Worship.

Though it seems the Bush administration is determined to outdo the Reich of Wilhelm II as most folly-prone in history (aren’t you glad of that?), thereby returning Barbara Tuchman’s Gun’s of August to the best-seller list, I am quite sure that Sir George Frazer’s The Golden Bough should be the most important book of the 21st Century. Though published in 1890, the importance of the book for these times cannot be overstated.

I should say begun in 1890, because the first wonderful thing about this work is that Frazer kept writing for 32 years, reaching 12 volumes. The subject was engrossing and deep, and the man was up to the task. Then, –wonder of wonders,– by 1922 Frazer thought the subject so important to the general reader that he cut it down to a single volume (which you may purchase from Amazon, to your left).
In Frazer’s own words:

“The object of this book is, by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood of Nemi. . . The strange rule of this priesthood has no parallel in classical antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. . . In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.
The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his. For year in, year out, in summer and winter, in fair weather and in foul, he had to keep his lonely watch, and whenever he snatched a troubled slumber it was at the peril of his life.

In the course of his researches he dwells on the origins of magic and religion. Of course, writing in the twilight of Victoria, Frazer does not say all he could have about the origins of “virgin-birth” myths, and just why the Feast of St. John’s Eve happens to fall on the day of pagan midsummer rituals. Nevertheless, he makes clear that, as far back as you go, there were leaders who made promises; and when the promises failed to come true, they made excuses; and when the excuses failed to satisfy, then science (in the general sense of application of a reasoning faculty other than “reading the entrails”) and humanity, as a whole, moved forward.

Thank you George W., you cathartic SOB.

Thanks to the French, always eager to glorify language (provided it is not Anglaise) we have this as the motto of the jeux Olympiques:

Citius, Altius, Fortius.
Swifter, Higher, Stronger.

Or, as Curtis Mayfield, –another of my heroes along with Sir George– put it:

Keep on Pushin’