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August 21, 2008
[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/sams/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg[/IMG]Bolt's antics strike a chord
IOC should welcome champion
Photos: Bolt's golden record
By Steve Simmons, SUN MEDIA
BEIJING - Someone needs to say this: The stodgy, aristrocratic head of the International Olympic Committee is an ass.
In this case, an unappreciative and all too sophisticated ass.
In his proper, button-down, European, IOC way, Jacques Rogge has criticized sprinter Usain Bolt, the best thing to happen to the Olympic Games, for being an immature showboat, lacking sportsmanship and behaving the way a champion should.
“That’s not the way we perceive being a champion,” Rogge said in an interview with three international news agencies Thursday.
We’ll change the sentence: That’s not the way he perceives being a champion.
Spend a minute or two with Usain Bolt and what you’ll find is a delightfully playful puppy. He's young, yappy, crazy, loveable, full of fun and nuggets and mischief and the antithesis of the traditional wound-too-tight, high strung, moody race-horse sprinters we have come to know and loathe in the past.
Never mind that his have been the greatest Olympic moments of ours or any other lives: This is a young man bringing breathtaking brilliance and child-like joy simultaneously to the Games.
Rogge should be bowing down and thanking him instead of taking shots.
He should be applauding like the rest of us are, because in this Olympics so full of stars none have shown brighter than Bolt.
But instead, Rogge points an accusatory finger at Bolt for not conforming to what he believes is the standard for sportsmanship and athletic behaviour.
“I have no problem with him doing a show,” said Rogge. “I think he should show more respect for his competitors and shake hands, give a tap on the shoulder to the other ones immediately after the finish and not make gestures like the one he made in the 100 metres.
“I understand the joy. He might have interpreted that in another way, but the way it was perceived was ‘catch me if you can.’ You don’t do that. But he’ll learn. He’s still a young man.”
At least there Rogge is correct. Bolt is a young man, having turned just 22 a few minutes after winning the 200 metres, and his youth is so much of his charm.
He is, the Jamaican team leader will tell you, just like a teenager, the same as he was when he was 15.
So when he won the 100-metre race at the Olympics with the fastest time in history and by the largest margin of any Olympic champion ever, he began his celebration with about 15 metres to go.
How great was that? Bolt made the race fun - but what he wanted more than anything was to win.
He wasn’t running for a world record because, in child-like sound logic, “I already had it.”
The 200 was a different story. The 200 he wanted badly: Not just to win but to set a world record.
When he ran the race in an astonishing and singular 19.30 not only did he win gold and set another record, but his margin of victory - .66 of a second - is Secretariat-like.
There was one racer on the television screen, no one else in the picture.
Nothing wrong with looking in a television camera and screaming: “I am No. 1. I am No. 1.”
Nothing wrong with dancing those wobbly legged silly Jamaican dances. That’s celebrating who he is and where he’s from.
Nothing wrong with him wrapping himself in a flag and doing a victory lap or 10. The outwardly unemotional Chinese people were made to care by Bolt.
This is sport at its most compelling. To almost everyone it appears but the man in charge of all this sport.
“I would love him to show more respect for his competitors,” said Rogge. “But he will learn in time. He should shake hands with his competitors and not ignore them. He’ll learn that sooner or later.”
The man Donovan Bailey calls the “greatest thing to ever happen to track and field” doesn’t need to be anything but himself.
He is affable and lovable, not difficult to warm up to the way Michael Johnson was, not divisive and wound the way Bailey once was.
There is no need for the fastest man in the history of mankind to change: We like him just the way he is.
[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/sams/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg[/IMG]Bolt's antics strike a chord
IOC should welcome champion
Photos: Bolt's golden record
By Steve Simmons, SUN MEDIA
BEIJING - Someone needs to say this: The stodgy, aristrocratic head of the International Olympic Committee is an ass.
In this case, an unappreciative and all too sophisticated ass.
In his proper, button-down, European, IOC way, Jacques Rogge has criticized sprinter Usain Bolt, the best thing to happen to the Olympic Games, for being an immature showboat, lacking sportsmanship and behaving the way a champion should.
“That’s not the way we perceive being a champion,” Rogge said in an interview with three international news agencies Thursday.
We’ll change the sentence: That’s not the way he perceives being a champion.
Spend a minute or two with Usain Bolt and what you’ll find is a delightfully playful puppy. He's young, yappy, crazy, loveable, full of fun and nuggets and mischief and the antithesis of the traditional wound-too-tight, high strung, moody race-horse sprinters we have come to know and loathe in the past.
Never mind that his have been the greatest Olympic moments of ours or any other lives: This is a young man bringing breathtaking brilliance and child-like joy simultaneously to the Games.
Rogge should be bowing down and thanking him instead of taking shots.
He should be applauding like the rest of us are, because in this Olympics so full of stars none have shown brighter than Bolt.
But instead, Rogge points an accusatory finger at Bolt for not conforming to what he believes is the standard for sportsmanship and athletic behaviour.
“I have no problem with him doing a show,” said Rogge. “I think he should show more respect for his competitors and shake hands, give a tap on the shoulder to the other ones immediately after the finish and not make gestures like the one he made in the 100 metres.
“I understand the joy. He might have interpreted that in another way, but the way it was perceived was ‘catch me if you can.’ You don’t do that. But he’ll learn. He’s still a young man.”
At least there Rogge is correct. Bolt is a young man, having turned just 22 a few minutes after winning the 200 metres, and his youth is so much of his charm.
He is, the Jamaican team leader will tell you, just like a teenager, the same as he was when he was 15.
So when he won the 100-metre race at the Olympics with the fastest time in history and by the largest margin of any Olympic champion ever, he began his celebration with about 15 metres to go.
How great was that? Bolt made the race fun - but what he wanted more than anything was to win.
He wasn’t running for a world record because, in child-like sound logic, “I already had it.”
The 200 was a different story. The 200 he wanted badly: Not just to win but to set a world record.
When he ran the race in an astonishing and singular 19.30 not only did he win gold and set another record, but his margin of victory - .66 of a second - is Secretariat-like.
There was one racer on the television screen, no one else in the picture.
Nothing wrong with looking in a television camera and screaming: “I am No. 1. I am No. 1.”
Nothing wrong with dancing those wobbly legged silly Jamaican dances. That’s celebrating who he is and where he’s from.
Nothing wrong with him wrapping himself in a flag and doing a victory lap or 10. The outwardly unemotional Chinese people were made to care by Bolt.
This is sport at its most compelling. To almost everyone it appears but the man in charge of all this sport.
“I would love him to show more respect for his competitors,” said Rogge. “But he will learn in time. He should shake hands with his competitors and not ignore them. He’ll learn that sooner or later.”
The man Donovan Bailey calls the “greatest thing to ever happen to track and field” doesn’t need to be anything but himself.
He is affable and lovable, not difficult to warm up to the way Michael Johnson was, not divisive and wound the way Bailey once was.
There is no need for the fastest man in the history of mankind to change: We like him just the way he is.
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