Quote:
Originally Posted by cuervo72
With Gu, I'm trying to not feel irrational jingoistic anger. At the same time, part of me still whispers if you like it there so much....
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More than a third of the people in the entire world live in India or China. And until recently (and this only with China), Olympic sports wasn't a thing. The Chinese have developed figure skaters (often not in China) and the Indians for some truly bizarre reason really love cricket. Some people think cricket will soon become bigger than baseball, world-wide, and that's all about India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc. It won't catch on here - we're still struggling with soccer.
If you're training to be in the Olympics, there aren't that many places or coaches out there. It would be interesting to see how many top Olympic athletes (and tennis players) who really are native to other countries, pretty much live in the United States (or for skiing, the northern European countries).
I don't care that Gu wants to represent China. The China she sees and experiences is not the same China most of her new countrymen and women experience. The sacrifices she makes for the sake of enjoying that privilege aren't ones she'll ever know enough to understand, unless she's unlucky enough to go the Peng Shuai route.
Figure skating at one point was literally skating a figure. Judges got up close, noted your edge, and you skated repeatedly around a circle or an "8" on the ice. You lost points if your skate touched outside the figure or if you lost your edge. At some point they added the long program. If you jumped well or were graceful enough, you hoped to make up for a mediocre score on the figures. Gradually, the figures counted for less and less until they were dropped from competition. All except the name itself.
The judging more or less makes sense, though every once in a while you get someone who can rotate more than anyone else, somewhat land it, but looks like an elephant out there. I guess with the newer sports, we just have to get to a point where the elephants look like elephants. I don't think the kids doing it right now know, either. The judging seems far more about reputation than reality than the other judged sports - and they sure complain about it. But until the X takes (and it may never take), that's all they get.