Girls and Boys

Marginality score: 10/10

In what will probably be my last post of the Olympics (will be spending this weekend at family celebrations, rather than fuming over the marginalisation of some group or other), I want to look at the most marginal of marginal figures.

First off, an admission: I've used Caster Semenya. No, not like that; the above image has been a favourite starting-point of mine for introducing undergraduate classes to ideas about race and gender, usually in a book like Jackie Kay's brilliant novel, Trumpet:

(If you haven't read it, STOP READING THIS BLOGGING RUBBISH RIGHT NOW and go and get hold of a copy. Seriously.)

Semenya seems a lovely, down-to-earth, genuine (to use three fairly interchangeable adjectives) person. Oh, and the favourite for the WOMEN'S 800m. That's right, the women's race. Who cares if she has a bit more testosterone than the average woman? Michael Phelps has significantly bigger feet and lung capacity than the average man, but I don't see anyone accusing him of being part-fish.

Which leads me to my point: when people get irate about a perceived unfairness in sport, it's generally racially 'other' individuals who are taken to task. So this isn't a question about Semenya's gender, at all: it's an uneasiness (see Edward Said) rooted in her race.

As one final example, take a look at this Daily Mail article on so-called 'plastic Brits', who switched nationality to join the GB team. Not entirely coincidentally, there's mention of any male, white athletes: all three 'examples' (and they are ridiculous, justifying those inverted commas: both Shana Cox's parents and one of Tiffany Ofill-Porter's are British) are, surprise-surprise, black women. Again, it all comes down to race.

And Now, The End Is Near

Marginality score: 6/10

Over the past few days, I've been musing on age, the passing of the years, Time's wingèd chariot, and all that. But enough about missing deadlines and depressing conversations about years of birth; I'm talking about athletes on their (literal and metaphorical) last legs. In amongst the stellar performances from teenage wunderkinds in the pool, and the sharing of gold and silver men's 400m medals between two competitors with a combined age a year younger than the GB football team captain, there have been several examples of medals won at the other end of athletes' careers: Beth Tweddle (who, according to Louis Smith, is 'getting on a bit' at the age of 27) taking bronze on the asymmetric bars; Vicky Pendleton ending her career with two medals on the track, the last of which -- in the last race of her career -- was a silver behind the Australian 'cow'; and Nick Skelton leading the GB show jumping team to gold at the age of 54. As Skelton admitted, he hadn't been particularly successful in his Olympic career, stretching back 20 years:

'I've waited a long time, been to a lot of Games, made a lot of mistakes, but you couldn't do it in a better place than London. This has to be my greatest moment. [...] I said to the guys we needed to go out there and win it. I've waited 54 years for this, so you can certainly say it was a long time coming. I've had a few misses in my time, but finally we got there.'

This, for me, is what the Olympics is all about: training, and waiting, and sacrificing, for a lifetime -- whether it's 27 years, or double that -- in order to be the absolute best. This is why these athletes keep going: not for the love of the sport, although that has to be a factor; not for the rush of competition, although again that particular shot of adrenaline probably helps; but because they truly believe they have the ability to be the best.

Over at The Golden Latrine, there's a really interesting piece on what silver and bronze medals mean to those who miss out on gold. While I have to agree, however, that silver and bronze are 'a reward for exceptional performance, a reminder that you are among the best in the world at what you do', I can't help but feel that what makes an Olympian is the existence of a real belief in one's ability to remove that 'among' -- this is why Skelton, Tweddle, Pendleton, et al keep going.

In the end, the last word must go to (Sir? surely) Bradley Wiggins:

'Once you have been an Olympic champion, you don’t talk about the other medals. If asked, I will normally say "I won three golds" because that’s the only colour that matters.'

In Praise of the Overdogs

Marginality score: 0/10 (This is cheating a bit. Can you write a post on the marginality of the non-marginal?? Hmm.)

This is the shortest of short posts (at least one of you will be pleased to learn) on the fact that while watching an underdog can be fun, sometimes I do quite like watching an overwhelming favourite win. We've already had a bizarre interpretation of the Olympic spirit, which has been deftly analysed here, among other places; seeing a plucky underdog doing his or her best sometimes reflects the 'Olympic dream', but isn't seeing a player or team at the top of their game what the pinnacle of sport should be all about? You can keep Eric the Eel -- I'm off to watch Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte playing the swimming-pool equivalent of duelling banjos.