Allegiances have become borderline crazy
2008 Olympic Games
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Medals
News
- Kobe and Co. crush Aussies
- Walsh, May-Treanor earn gold again
- Bolt completes sprint sweep
- U.S. edges Japan in baseball
- IOC chides Bolt for behavior
- Lithuania ousts Yao, China
- U.S. gets softball win vs. Japan
- Rain good news for U.S. BMX racer
- Jamaica's Walker wins 400m hurdles
- Lagat advances to 5k final
Analysis
Multimedia
- PHOTOS: Day 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 8
- PHOTOS: Day 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1
- PHOTOS: Olympic beauties | Mascots
- PHOTOS: Opening Ceremony
- PHOTOS: U.S. athletes to watch
Starting at center for Germany, all the way from Grand Rapids, Mich., it's Chris Kaman!
On the track for the United States, all the way from Kapsabet, Kenya, it's rapid rabbit Bernard Lagat.
If the goal of the modern Olympics was to bring people together through spirited athletic competition and break down the walls that separate nations, mission accomplished. The pot has melted.
Chinese ping-pong players Cheng Gong Zheng and Hui Mei Jin will now compete for Turkey under the names Cem Zeng and Melek Hu. Hu are they kidding? The Olympic spirit should not be about free-agent mercenaries, seeking out a country that could use the services that don't quite measure up in their homeland. (Then again, according to my TV, the Olympic spirit is about selling chicken sandwiches.)
In these Olympics, you don't play for the name on the back of your jersey, you play for the latest stamp on your passport.
You couldn't get more American than beautiful Californian blonde equestrian world champ Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and her dad was a successful director. But if she takes gold in the individual jumping competition — as she is favored to do — she won't be shedding a tear to the "Star-Spangled Banner." Nope, she'll be celebrating to "Das Lied Der Deutschen." That's right, Michaels-Beerbaum will saddle up for Germany in the Games, having married German equestrian Markus Beerbaum. At least her horse, Shutterfly, was born in Deutschland
In women's track, American Sanya Richards is favored in the 400 meters but will have to hold off two hard-charging Jamaicans in Novlene Williams-Mills and Rosemarie Whyte. Richards, of course, was also born in Jamaica before becoming a U.S. citizen at age 12. For the record, should Williams-Mills or Whyte win, the Jamaican National Anthem is a rhythm-challenged disaster, unworthy of the per capita fastest place on Earth, and should be changed immediately to "Get Up, Stand Up" or "Trenchtown Rock."
The favorite in the women's 1,500 meters, Maryam Jamal, was born in Ethiopia. But she is a resident of Switzerland. So naturally she'll be competing for the island nation of Bahrain.
Is your Bahrain hurting yet?
Remember the good old days when you could just root, root, root for the red, white and blue and root against those dudes competing as women for East Germany? The Russians would forever be the Evil Empire, stealing the basketball gold medal in 1972 from those plucky American amateurs.
Now the "Russians" are cute girls from South Dakota.
The whole thing has a no-grades, can't-we-all-just-get-along, Montessori school feel to it. This hey-man-we-are-all-citizens-of-the-world Kumbaya vibe may be great for important things like breeding tolerance and understanding between cultures, but let's face it, it's lame for sports.
For the most part, the country-shopping athlete has been accepted with an indifferent shrug.
But the Hammon defection made waves.
The runner-up for the WNBA MVP award last year, Hammon dreamed of playing for Team USA. But the U.S. squad was loaded at guard with Sue Bird, Katie Smith, Kara Lawson, Cappie Pondexter and Diana Taurasi.
When Hammon was initially refused even the courtesy of a tryout for the team — she was not among the 21 selected to vie for 12 spots — she signed a contract with CSKA Moscow to play in the Euroleague (during the WNBA offseason) for $2 million over four years. With the contract came the opportunity to become a naturalized citizen and play for Mother Russia.
Unlike Kaman, whose great grandparents were German, Hammon has no ancestral ties to Russia. And to hear Team USA coach Anne Donovan say it, choosing to play for the former Soviet Republic — where, incidentally, political opponents and journalists still have a habit of falling off balconies — is close to treason.
"If you play in this country, live in this country and you grow up in the heartland — and you put on a Russian uniform — you are not a patriotic person in my mind," said Donovan earlier this summer.
It may not be patriotic, but it is certainly the free market at work, and what could be more American than that? Donovan herself sought out opportunities to play pro ball in Japan and Italy in the '80s when no such job existed for women in the States. (A Russian gold medal would be worth a cool $100K to Hammon.)
For her part, Donovan missed the 1980 Olympics when the U.S. boycotted over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She missed another crack at the Russians in 1984 when they skipped the Games in L.A. before finally getting her gold medal in a Soviet-attended Olympics in 1988.
The wait is almost over for Donovan's latest showdown with Russia.
But this won't be a plucky bunch of American college kids beating the Soviet professionals. The heavily favored Americans are a female Dream Team. The Russians are good, Euro champs, but a serious underdog, even with Big Shot Becky (who missed all six of her shots in a tune-up loss to Latvia last weekend.)
And if Becky Hammon has the ball with the clock winding down, trailing by one against the mighty Team USA, I could easily find myself rooting for her and — by extension — Russia.
But of course I'll be happy if the U.S. wins, the logical ambivalence of the choose-your-own-teams Olympics.
Call me old-fashioned, but the Olympics were a lot more interesting when they were a lot less enlightened.
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