When the Cold War Was HOT
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.
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