Olympic Games 2016 in Rio de Janeiro

Track and Field is the Queen of Sports and the 2008 Olympic Games had witnessed truly memorable results in men’s sprints. Usain Bolt’s two world records, that he had since broken, 9.69 in 100m and 19.30 in 200m, were simply unbelievable and made the Olympic track and field events stand out.

But it was not just Bolt, but the fact that six sprinters ran the hundred in Beijing under ten seconds and three sprinters did the two hundred under twenty seconds and you realize the two events were truly phenomenal.

Although the hundred was always big at any games, in my book Usain Bolt’s times at the Beijing Olympic Games was the most memorable hundred since Armin Harry of Germany ran a World Record at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960. I was just a kid then but I remember that to run a hundred at ten flat at that time was as unbelievable time as it was to break the ten second barrier number of years later.

I recall the 1960 sprints at the Rome Olympics also on the women’s side because they were dominated by Wilma Rudolph, an American sprinter. It was not just that she won three gold medals and that she was the fastest woman at the time but that she achieved what she did having overcome a serious bout of polio in her early childhood that resulted in her having to wear a brace for a number of years.

The Rome games are well rooted in my mind also on account of Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia. Few people ever took close notice of that country at the time but Bikila not only won the 1960 Olympic marathon in a world record time, he also did it running barefooted. Great documentaries have been made of his legendary run which undeniably had sown the seeds of Ethiopia having since become the cradle of many world’s best long distance runners.

Speaking of the long distance events at the Olympics, the 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and the marathon, one must recall the dominance of Emil Zatopek. Nicknamed “the Czech locomotive,” Emil Zatopek, at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, was the first runner to win all three events at one Olympic Games, something that has not been done since.
But the sprinters seemed to have always stolen the show at the games, including Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, so I wonder what will 2012 games in London bring in sprints and how about the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio? Can the Jamaican continue to dominate this far into the future?

Triple jump used to be an event that few non-track and field enthusiasts even noticed. At the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956 the best of the filed jumped only over 15 meters. Today even women go over 15 meters and with the men’s World Record being over 18 meters and jumpers routinely going over 17 meters it is an exciting event to watch.

Looking back one can’t but recall the incredible Viktor Saneyev of former Soviet Union who won the Olympic triple jump three times – in 1968, 1972 and 1976, and only missed his forth gold by five inches in 1980.

Jonathan Edwards of Great Britain dominated the event for a number of years and still holds the World Record of incredible 18.29 meters, which is over 60 feet, and constitutes a phenomenal average of 6 meters plus per each hop, step and jump.

British track and field has his worthy follower in Phillips Idowu who placed second at the Olympic Games in Beijing with a jump of 17.62 meters. The event was won by Nelson Evora of Portugal who beat Idowu by mere 5 centimeters.

At the Beijing Olympic games seven jumpers went over 17 meters, a stunning performance, that makes one wonder who can win in London in 2012 and what distance the athletes can reach at the Rio Olympic Games in 2016.

Answer: I don’t care!! And not because of his sex life but because I think it really means squat if he were to win the Olympic games golf event that was only recently added to the list of Olympic sports at the 2016 games.

With the mass media coverage of Tiger’s infidelities, the man has suffered and continues to suffer at the hands of his sponsors. They have either already dropped him or announced they are reviewing whether to continue him as the sponsor of their products.

Amazing – we just can’t leave it at the fact that Tiger Woods is the best golfer that has ever played the game, we have to dig and dig deep into his private life. Same as we have done with Michael Phelps and his bong. Shouldn’t our news networks rather focus on some real news from around the world instead of feeding us the garbage of his love life?

But that’s typical American puritan preoccupation with sex. On one hand we profess to keep sex and nudity out of limelight of our environment in order to curb sex crime and bring up our children right, and on the other we smother our news with the most bizarre coverage of it.

We love to put pictures of men that were caught soliciting prostitution on a public website and announce the link in our media. We have congress discuss what to do when Jane Jackson’s nipple appears during Super Bowl for millions to get a fraction of a second look at it. And we must open local evening TV news with a story of a woman getting arrested for breast feeding in Wall-Mart.

What are we accomplishing with all that? Do we have less sexual predators or less prostitution? And of course we all have already been told that Tiger Wood’s story will constitute direct hit on PGA earnings, golf equipment sales and profits in general.

Will Tiger Woods be at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games 2016 in Brazil? I don’t care whether he will or will not, nor do I care about any of the negative impact on golf his love life now has, I just wonder – who are we?

Let Tiger play golf and enjoy his amazing skill! Nothing else matters if you love golf!