Truce in our Time

The Olympic Games, it seems to me, illustrate the difficulties of seeing very large social events with any kind of precision, whether it is from up close or from of 5,521 miles away by television—that being the distance, using great circle navigation, between Detroit and Sochi in Russia. At the same time, what with modern media coverage, one can also get a more or less trustworthy general feeling about these games. In our case we have access, this year, to both U.S. and Canadian coverage, and we made good use of both. Our mutual conclusion this year was that the Sochi winter games came very close realizing the ideals of the Olympics. The games were peaceful; the contentious aspects, so jarring in many past games we’ve actually watched closely, were almost absent this time around.

A feature of the Ancient Olympics was the Olympic Truce. The Modern Olympics feature the same truce, officially put in place by the United Nations in 1993. The Ancient Olympics were, of course, a miniature. The games were international, but the regions interacting were all Greek. The games did not move about in those days. They were all held in the region called Ellis, in Arcadia, the southern portion of Greece, Ellis itself its north-western edge. The games were held at the city of Olympia within that region, hence the name of the games. The truce made sense, given the location of Olympia. Athletes had to travel very long distances to get there. The distance between Olympia and Athens, to take a horizontal route separating two edges of Greece, is 163 miles—hence speaking of the Ancient Olympiad as a miniature of the modern makes sense.  Localizing that distance of 163 miles? Well, the distance from Detroit to Chicago is 282 miles; see also the concluding note.

This comparison—between the little and the Big—struck us yesterday as the closing ceremonies ended. A good thing that we have a global Olympics now. Those interlocking Olympic rings? Brigitte thought they stood for continents; I had no idea, but she went and looked it up; and she had been right all along. Each ring stands for one of five regions of the world. Until 1951, the official handbook identified blue as Europe, yellow as Asia, black as Africa, green as Australia and Oceania, and red as the Americas. But since the originator of this symbol, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French educator and co-founder of the Modern Olympics, made no such association (he chose the colors from uniforms of different countries competing in his time, 1912), the IOC removed any linkage of color to actual regions.

The meaning of “truce,” when unwrapped a little, is rather odd. The very possibility speaks to human power to transcend one level of experience and to establish, if only temporarily, another and superior level above it: to rise above violent hostilities to the level of perhaps grim but actual peace. It would at least seem logical to think that once truce has been achieved, just a small additional effort would also yield lasting harmony. If it can hold for three months—which was the duration of the Olympic Truce in ancient times—it could last four, five, six, and more, until we’ve lost all count.

Truce is a good first step. We’ve gotten that far. As far as world peace is concerned, the Bronze still seems out of reach. But who knows what the future will hold.

The root of that word, in English, incidentally, is centered on the proto-Germanic for “faith,” still almost literally present in the current German word Treue. It takes faith on both sides to make a treaty. Treaties now, faith tomorrow. God speed the day.

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On horses, ships, and volors. In ancient Greece the means of transportation were by foot, on horse, or by ship—the really large ones largely rowed. To achieve global utopia, we need volors. That word comes from a pair of novels by Robert Hugh Benson, Lord of the World (1908) and The Dawn of All (1911). The first is a dis-, the other a utopia. First flight took place on earth on December 17, 1903, courtesy of Orville and Wilbur Wright. In Benson’s projections, the art had been perfected to resemble, and in many ways surpass, the age of the jet in which we make our home. As for The Dawn of All, it is a world where truce has turned to peace—through faith.

The map is from Wikipedia (link).

Country Standings

Four years is a long time. Every four years, about this time in an Olympics, I get confused when I see the country rankings.  In today’s presentation, for example, the Netherlands and the United States both have 12 total medals, but Norway ranks higher than the US. In the same list Russia with 10 total medals is ranked below Switzerland with a mere 4. So then the next question is, how much weight does each medal have to produce this result.

It turns out that the various ranking schemes one can find on the Internet merely confuse the issue, as illustrated in the following spreadsheet layout:

Sochi Standings as of February 13, 2014
	Rank as				Points for each kind of medal
	Reported	Medal count			Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Total
		Gold	Silver	Bronze	4	2	1	Medals	Points
1	Germany	6	2	1	24	4	1	9	29
2	Canada	4	4	2	16	8	2	10	26
3	Norway	4	3	6	16	6	6	13	28
4	Netherlands	4	3	5	16	6	5	12	27
5	USA	4	2	6	16	4	6	12	26
6	Switzerland	3	0	1	12	0	1	4	13
7	Russia	2	4	4	8	8	4	10	20

I’m showing the countries in rank order as reported by Sochi Olympics itself. To these rankings I’ve applied one of the ranking schemes (4/2/1) in which gold is multiplied by 4, silver by 2, and bronze by 1. There are also other schemes, e.g., 3/2/1 and 5/3/1. Notice that, in the last column, Canada should be fourth, with the US, and Russia sixth. Indeed no matter what the ranking scheme, each produces the same results. 

Well, it turns out that no “weighting” is used at all. What actually happens, I discovered, is that the results are subjected to a sorting algorithm with five parameters. The data are sorted by (1) gold count, then (2) silver, then (3) bronze, then (4) total metals—and if two countries are identical at that point, the last ranking is (5) alphabetical. No “points” or weights need to be applied—and Excel does a right fine job.

Olympic Curlicues

Curling is my most favorite winter sport in the Olympics. I watch the sport in other years as well thanks to an accident. Both in Minneapolis and later in Detroit, we’ve had access to Canadian television, and Canada is the curling-Mecca of the world.

Now comes a story in the Wall Street Journal  titled “How Russia’s Plot for Mercenary Curlers Failed.” (Yes. Rather milking the WSJ for posts today, but it’s a special season.) Evidently, a while back, at the Vancouver games, Russia decided to achieve medal-status in curling at Sochi. Its powers-that-be decided to hire high-ranking players and coaches from Canada and to give the players Russian citizenship when the time came. Internal resistance in Russia foiled this attempt; the Russian curlers we shall see this year (if they managed to get into the run-offs) will have been born (rather than born-again) Russians.

This got me thinking. The first thought was that Russia shouldn’t have hired Canadians; instead it should’ve hired some modestly competent Chinese coach, and never mind the sport. The Chinese know exactly how to excel in any Olympic sport they target. They’ve got the largest possible population from which to choose potential talent, and Communism (of late jettisoned by Russia) still helps them persuade the talent to undergo the herculean labors required to succeed. This then led to the second thought. The most potent tool for achieving Olympic Victory is no doubt Communism—recall, as Brigitte suggested, the East Germans’ always stellar showings while they called their country the GDR. The “free market” model just doesn’t cut it—not in the minor sports. Something more muscular is needed, like Communism.

Today Norway leads with 11 medals and Russia has 7. One of Russia’s medals comes from a South Korean named Victor An, a born-again Rusky. We laughed: All these nation-states competing at Sochi. And one truly International Competitor: Russia. For all we know their best talent has been recruited from every country in the world.

HT to Brigitte for flagging this story for someone who rarely gets to the sports page even in Olympic times…

Olympic Ticket Prices

A chance remark during Olympic coverage alerted me to the fact that ticket prices might be high. A little looking provided this relatively accessible link. Up to five levels of tickets are available; in many venues only four levels apply. To give two examples, here is Swimming and Hockey:

Swimming	Final	£450	£295	£185	£95	£50
Hockey	Final	£150	£95	£65	£45

All venues may be seen at the link. Today’s conversion rate indicates that £1 = $1.57. Therefore the best price for the swimming finals is $706.50 per person. As for the opening and closing ceremonies, the Opening Ceremony (best seat) was £2,012 ($3,159), the Closing Ceremony will run £1,500 ($2,355).

Much more detail is available from another site (link), but it is rather cumbersome to use. Detailed listings reveal how ticket prices vary based on the sport’s popularity or prestige (e.g. Dressage), also that on the whole women’s sports produce a lower ticket prices than men’s.

Olympic Notes

This blog began on 2009, but having been an almost daily preoccupation, it seems much older—so much so that I thought I’d look back to see what I had written about the last Olympics only to discover that I hadn’t written anything. Neither about the Olympics—nor yet about the last presidential contest. Surprise.

Such events—well separated in time—have a certain character. I tend to forget, except as a token, the sequence of feelings that they will produce. Hence a kind of recurrence marks them; each time they come, I think: “That’s what I thought the last time too.” I will leave the negative reactions to sleep like dogs. Yesterday came two pleasing events. One was Dressage Riding, my Father’s passionate avocation. It has retained its spirit of sportsmanship, not to say aura of aristocracy—the reason why, this year, it was subject to sneers. My Father was a genuine product of the Austro-Hungarian empire; to be sure he arrived after it had passed, but its spirit still lingered in the Hungarian military. He was highly-enough qualified so that the family expected him to make the Hungarian national team in 1940—but World War II interfered (link). His other favorite sport was Fencing. It delighted me to see the Women’s team win a bronze medal in that sport—an achievement for a team ranked fifth over all. We only saw the last match-up in which Courtney Hurley defeated the 2004 Olympic champion, Anna Sivkova of Russia, to clinch the team’s achievement. Sometimes a bronze feels like gold. Other team members were Maya Lawrence and Kelley Hurley, Courtney’s older sister.

Two further notes—extending the timeline. Such games as these are the hallmark of secular times—although the Olympics began in 776 BC—which was decisively not a secular era in Greece. But as such times set in in earnest, the spectacles become more and more, well, secular. Thus it did not surprise me that Emperor Theodosius stopped such events—or they terminated during his reign.. He was engaged in imposing Christianity on the empire, and the times were turbulent. The ancient Olympics thus lasted for 1169 years. Nor does it surprise me that the Olympics were revived beginning in 1796 in Revolutionary France before evolving to the current games by 1856. Can we read into that, using such evidence, that Christendom, as a cultural epoch, lasted from 393 to 1796—thus 1404 years? Food for contemplation in the practice of the only sport I’m still capable of: walking. But my walk has nothing to do with the Olympic kind. Practice of that would surely land me in a hospital in just 15 minutes. Time is very elastic, you might say.

Victory Convulsions

We noticed it first in tennis (such things start with elites)—the gradual appearance of victory convulsions. For us the first big name in tennis was Jack Kramer. He played in days when players wore long white pants. However fierce the competition, players were on their best behavior; they controlled their gestures and facial expressions—they also kept their mouths shut. No huge outcry with each serve or smash. At games’ end came a civilized handshake. Umpires never saw an ugly look—never mind having to endure tirades. It took a while before the victory convulsion came to be the routine marker of hard-won victories. Nowadays we see it so much the young easily learn it by imitation. Back in our days one had to work at it. There was the shout to practice, ideally the roar. Then the pumping of the arms—as if you intended to hit the sky with both fists balled. To that, if you could pull it off, was added a similar, repeated up-thrust of the hips, executed with the knees half-bent. Then the appropriate facial expression, which, to be effective, had to be the perfect fusion between rage and triumph. It doesn’t come naturally to all. It is rather pathetic to see some players, especially women (and the worst offenders tend to be ladies), trying to give an imitation of “nature in the raw” and utterly failing—because some still present stain of modesty prevents them doing so properly, giving it all the gusto. But perhaps I am wrong in calling it “nature in the raw.” Animals are quite incapable of it. Yesss! You have to have that something extra, that mysterious quality only humans have.

Canadian TV Olympics

Those of us who live in the Greater Detroit metro area have long had an advantage when the Olympics came. Our television locally (ordinary as well as cable), brings us the broadcasts of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Now CBC is a commercial channel; ads are a routine part of its presentations. But there has been a vast difference in Canadian versus U.S. coverage of the Olympics. Canadians also “frame” events where Canadians have a chance to win, but they don’t twist and hype events the way our broadcasters always do. Its more about the sport, less about personalities, judges, national rivalries, and, of course, the Glory.

My sole trip to Japan took place during an Olympic summer; it was long ago, and I forget the year. I watched a good deal. I don’t have Japanese; nonetheless I thought it was by far the most plain and straightforward coverage of any games I’d ever seen before. Culture colors everything. Self-effacement is (or at least was) a Japanese characteristic.

This year there is no Canadian coverage for us kibitzers on the border. And you’re not told the reason why if you just watch CBC. You are supposed to know. A little research produces the following: Back in 2007 Canada’s Bell Media and Rogers Media formed a corporation called Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium. Its network is CTV. It has been covering the games since 2010. No more CBC Sports. Now while we do get CBC here, we don’t get CTV. Therefore we are in NBC’s hands—although on cable, anyway, two different channels (NBC and MSNBC) carry programming—and different kinds. But the flavor is hyped-commercial. And because the sports might not be exciting enough, prominent events are wrapped, diced, and flavored inside a kind of story—to make us all feel more involved. CBC, however, may yet bring us future games. Rogers has opted out of CTV’s future bids on games. Bell has therefore “partnered” with CBC to bid on future games. And that partnership is likely to win future rights. In the 2014 Winter—and the 2016 Summer Games—our own Channel 99 might yet give us a valued alternative.

Counting: 18, 19, 20, 21, XXVII, XXX

When I was born on July 31, 1936 in Budapest, my grandfather was informed of this event by telegram in Berlin. He was attending the Games of the XI Olympiad there. As the opening ceremonies began there on August 1, I was finishing my first day of life. Today the Games of the XXX Olympiad open in London. Therefore I’ve lived through 20 different Olympics. But the games were cancelled in 1940 (to be held in Tokyo) and in 1944 (to be held in London); therefore I’ve lived through 18 actual and two virtual Olympics. The 1916 Olympics (to be held in Berlin) were also cancelled, that one because of what we later learned to call World War I. The modern games began in 1896 (Athens). As the listing just recited shows, we have actually held XXVII games, but we count XXX. Brigitte, who beat me into breathing in 1932 (the X Olympiad held in Los Angeles), has seen 21 games pass but only 19 were actually held in her life. Together we do cover the landscape pretty well. Oh. Lest I forget. In 1936 Hungary came in third in total gold medals: Germany, United States, and tiny Hungary.