Let me say this right away: I haven’t watched a single minute of the Olympics on TV since the games started.
I don’t, because I strongly disagree with the horrible crimes consistently perpetrated by the criminal regime in Beijing. Ever since the student protests at Tiananmen square many years ago, I have refused to endorse anything that government stands for.
However, it is damned impossible to open a newspaper without being bombarded with Olympic news and the last 18 hours have seen a drama of epic proportions play out on the Olympic arena. More precisely, it’s played out in one of the sailing events, specifically in the 49er-class.
Denmark had a miserable start on these Olympic games, with medal-favorites falling by the wayside left and right. The country was slowly starting to believe we’d go home without a single medal and suffer gross national shame. Former member of the Olympic comittee, Kai Holm, even said he doubted Denmark had the guts and strength to win more than two medals in all. Well, he’s been thoroughly shamed the last few days, as outsiders and a few favorites stepped up to the plate and delivered.
Over the ages, Denmark has gathered a large number of medals in sailing events, but the last few Olympics have been a bit dry in that department. As the favorites started failing this time as well, we all thought the same thing would happen again. Then the outsiders in the 49er stepped up. The 49er class is a boat with two crewmembers, very fast and quite a strange looking little thing. It’s also one of the classes where you can constantly see boats overtaking each other and where there’s a real race going on.
Before yesterday’s socalled Medal Race, the Danes were actually in the lead, with 11 points down to second place. If they just finished sixth out of the starting ten boats in the Medal Race, they’d be CERTAIN of gold. However, the weather gods conspired to make things miserable for them. The winds were getting close to storm, and many crews complained that it was dangerous to sail under those conditions in a tiny boat like a 49er, but the protests were brushed aside. Rushing to get their boat ready under harrowing conditions…the Danes saw their mast break. Unmasted, a sailing boat is worthless and the race was started without them, which would certainly mean that they lost the gold medals or ANY medals for that matter. Desperate, the two danes saw the rest of the diminished Medal Race field start…
Then their coach stormed off to get a hold of the nearest team with a ready boat. The Croats stepped up and offered to let the Danes borrow their boat for the race. That…ladies and gentlemen…is OUTSTANDING sportsmanship and the finest example of true Olympic spirit I’ve seen in years. The Danes got to borrow the boat of a defeated opponent so that they could at least defend their chance to win a medal. However, the Danes reached the starting line four minutes and thirty five seconds too late. The race had started and they RUSHED out there to try to accomplish the impossible and catch up.
Boats capsized time and again and had to be turned back upright in the hard weather and waves, but the Danes, despite capsizing themselves, fought on and finished seventh despite everyone else having a four minute, thirty five second head start. A gargantuan feat in its own right, and since their competitors in second place didn’t WIN the race, the seventh place was enough to secure the gold. Denmark celebrated…
For about two minutes, then the Spaniards displayed a gross example of LACK of Olympic spirit and lodged a protest. After all, the Danes had competed in an opponent’s boat and had arrived too late according to the rules that says you are disqualified if you’re not on the track four minutes after the official start of the race. They wanted to win gold so badly that they were willing to win it on a bureaucrat’s desk rather than on the race-track.
Now, I realize the rules are there for a reason, but first of all, the race was held under downright dangerous conditions and secondly, the events that played out with the Croat team lending their boat to another nation, was such an example of true Olympic thinking, that even the Germans who stood to advance to a bronze medal position if the Danes were eliminated, said they’d rather finish fourth in an honest manner than third by winning a desk-medal. Their coach went into the press stating that ‘a medal has to be won on the water for it to be worth anything, not given to you by bureaucrats’.
It didn’t finish there. Because of the principal nature of the decision, the Jury had to postpone their decision until today. The Jury leader said that while they apologized for the delay, this decision was of such importance that they wanted to do it right. That no one had been able to foresee that one nation would let another race in their boat.
…
This is the Olympics. It SHOULD be foreseeable, but it says a lot about the modern Olympics that it isn’t.
However, early this morning, Danish time, the Spaniards got a bloody nose and were swept aside by the Jury, which decided to let the race results stand. Denmark got its second gold medal.
It should never have been in doubt. The Danish 49er crew had NO unfair advantage. If ANYONE starts a boat-race in a boat they’ve never sailed before, after giving all their competitors a 4,35 minute head start, and still manage to advance three places, it proves they are worthy champions.
Unlike men who would rather win by having pencilnecks assign them the gold medal afterwards.
But the true winners here are not the Danes. The true winners are the Croats who so unselfishly allowed the Danes to race. True they were eliminated from the Medal Race, but that does not diminish the granduer of their gesture. And also, the true winners are the Germans whose coach made that public statement.
Those two nations at least showed that the Olympic spirit is not dead and burried in faked Chinese television broadcasts.
It made me feel good to see.