IN TIME’s August 25 issue, columnist Samantha Power began unearthing the “soiled” motive behind Russia’s recent assault of Georgia through Thucydides’ realist hoe.
But midway in her commentary, Power later declared that more than “honor, fear and interest,” which for Thucydides were the slabs of meat that sparked the dogfight between the Athenian-led Delian League and the Spartan-backed Peloponnese in his History of the Peloponnesian War, there is another factor that the grand old men of history always tend to overlook—perceived humiliation, as far as insecurity is concerned.
This, according to Power, was classic Russia in all its post-Cold War trappings. Blame everything, she posed, to the remarkable vigilance of Russia’s NATO ambassador Dmitri Rogazin, who urged the Kremlin that in order not to do a Serbia (which gave in to Kosovo’s plea for independence) and maintain respect among its western neighbors, the Old Empire must use its “brute military force” to send the message across. Noting Vladimir Putin’s testosterone-charged brand of diplomacy, surprises at this juncture then becomes trivial and, in all probably, exceptional.
But Russia, at the time, did not own the spotlight.
There was Michael Phelps and China waging a battle of their own, and winning it to the chagrin of the opposition-turned-spectators.
The Philippines, for its part, was again lucky enough to share the Olympic gods’ modest bequeathal of spectatorship: a kind of clemency from self-flagellation which has been in vogue twelve years now.
Tanks and mortars aside, the Olympics, as former Philippine Sports Commission chairman Philip Ella Juico once said in many an interview prior to the 2004 Athens debacle, is (no matter how politically clichéd as it may sound) a “war” by other means.
If this is so, how then have our vaunted “soldiers” fared in the killing ramps of Beijing? Miserably, that not even an overdose of media hype can help stem the bleeding from a dotted national psyche which, in a recent SWS survey, has ironically affirmed via a 91-percent nod, the “importance of competing in the Olympics” for the sake of having something to cheer about, a mix of self-entartainment and patriotic jousting to at least take a day off from the everyday rigors of life.
Unfortunately, Lady Luck was too expensive a mistress to invite for a victory dance, and all the more for a one-night stand. The Philippines, for all intents and purposes, did not even survive the qualifying rounds.
In the wake of this Olympic flop where some of our sports officials even displayed the chutzpah to grandstand their way to the headlines back home through the ear-tingling lines I’m-proud and/or I’m-satisfied-with-their-performance, pertaining to the athletes’ showing in the games just to grease their way to the upcoming London junket four years from now, Beijing Olympics chief de mission Monico Puentevella then called for a national sports summit tentatively this September to “assess” its “performance” in the high seas. Say that again?
In addition, these government wise guys declared that underperforming National Sports Associations which are only milking dry the country’s Olympic war chest but seldom deliver the goods for the country, will be abolished to better fund what our sports honchos call as “medal-rich” events in the Olympiad. Talk about bureaucratic thumb-sucking all over again.
But since our sports Neros are in the mood for some table-stomping policy-making cocktail party, and salivating at that for the elusive gold which not even the dull glint of the bronze has managed to eclipse for a dozen years to date, let this writer share an equally outrageous but mutually assured win-win solution if only to satisfy this ever “apologetic” clique’s appetite for rocket-science thinking.
Why not, instead of channeling state funds to invest in the scientific rearing of our athletes, not to mention hiring foreign coaches and spending too much on equipment, simply gather the most brilliant geeks in town, perhaps from MIT or the laboratory caves of the Al-Qaeda, and commission them to build a time machine. Yes, you heard it right fellas. A time machine inspired by the Michael J. Fox-starred Back to the Future trilogy. For what? To insert golden pages in our “erstwhile” tattered Olympic memoirs. How is that so?
Just imagine our young athletes raiding the past and giving the Olympic greats of that era a monumental slap on the nape. For instance, swimmer Ryan Arabejo’s 15:42.27-effort in the 1,500-meter freestyle which earned him a 28th-place finish out of the 32 contestants in Beijing, would unquestionably be gold-medal material as opposed to the 20:06.6 time set by the event’s first winner Andrew Charlton of Australia, provided that the Filipino shuttle back to the 1924 Paris Games and share the distinction of being the first Pinoy Olympian alongside trackster David Nepomuceno.
The same can be expected of the Miguel Molina—1924 version—whose 2:16.94 clocking in the 200-meter breaststroke for a 47-of-52 finish would be lifetimes better than the 2:56.6 mark of supposed inaugural victor Robert Skelton of America. James Walsh, whom scribes lauded for being the first Southeast Asian to break the “psychological” two-minute barrier in the Olympics when he swam his way to 1:59.33 in the 200-meter butterfly, could have achieved more, the first Olympic record perhaps, provided he retreats to Melbourne, circa 1956 during the maiden staging of his event to offset the 2:19.03-time of American William Yorzyk, its first record holder.
Long jumper Henry Dagmil, who checked in 34th of 38 contenders in Beijing after leaping a distance of 7.58 meters in the long jump event, could have denied American William De Hart Hubbard, who, via a 7.44-meter hop, gained the distinction of being the first black athlete to win an individual gold had he just been around in 1924. Intriguing isn’t it?
Better yet, the 15-man Philippine crew, while in the heat of preparations, could have just rifled themselves to the days ahead of their humbling Olympic stints just to alter the result of their listless campaigns. But restructuring the past distorts the present and obliterates the future. It could be the greatest fraud in human history. Who cares? We are, after all, apathetically used to it.
And for as long as our sports leaders continue to treat the ten Philippine records broken in Beijing as “worthy” achievements on the Olympic stage, this country is bound for more future heartaches. It’s like performing in Broadway only to display a three-year-old Daddy-I-can-now-walk-on-both-legs act before an expectant crowd of literati. Even if the recruitment, training and preparation have gone global, it is still useless if our sports officials’ standards of athletic success remain local.
Define humiliation.
