When International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Jacques Rogge walks into a room and introduces himself, people instantly spring into action. This is because they think he’s choking to death on a herring-bone. But apart from having a glottal seizure for a surname, he is, by most accounts, a fairly popular fellow.
So, when a Malaysian news site ran a story on Tuesday entitled ‘IOC’s Rogge sleeping with the athletes”, it didn’t seem entirely outlandish to speculate that a hands-on managerial approach was being implemented in the Olympic Village: a romantic candlelit tryst over a plate of protein slabs, husky innuendos exchanged between sips of decaffeinated isotonic rainwater; the awkward question of whether or not to use performance-enhancing drugs; and finally, as the moon set over Athens, cries of ‘Citius! Altius! Fortius!”
Somewhat disappointingly it turned out that Rogge was merely slumming it in the village in something the Greek media were calling ‘Spartan” accommodation. The sleeping, one must therefore assume, happens on a bed of thorns from which he is woken by means of a brisk beating from a naked man wielding a plank with a nail through it.
It was a valuable caution to those of us who, too well-informed and busy to do any actual reading, glean our Weltanschauung from website headlines. Indeed, such insight would have been a welcome antidote to a disturbing report of supernatural Oriental pandemonium, that appeared a day earlier.
‘Chinese fans go on the rampage,” read the headline. One shuddered, imagining the horror of being trapped in a Beijing ally by a rogue swarm of paper fans, their leader menacingly furling and unfurling to reveal a stylised painting of a sinister duck on a nest; the terror as its minions flap at one’s face, clogging eyes and throat with faintly salty rice-paper; a hinge-pinch on an ankle, the first bead of blood, an unholy rustling; darkness —
It was a relief, then, to learn that Chinese football supporters had been throwing things at Japanese fans, and that Sino-Japanese relations in general were quickly heading in the direction of oil embargoes, gunboats and other reassuringly normal diplomatic hijinks.
But it’s not easy to clamber back on to the wagon of literacy once you’ve fallen into cyber-superficiality. Especially when faced with headlines like ‘Willie Becomes 19th Tiger to Qualify for Olympic Games”, which appeared on Monday. Was Willie’s late inclusion a tacit admission of an under-strength team in the Muddy Watering-hole Synchronised Splashing event? Or could we look forward to Willie anchoring the 4×100 Punjabi Villager Chase-and-Eat Relay?
Alas, no. Willie is Kelly Willie, a student at Louisiana State University (whose mascot is the tiger, because of all the tigers that live in the bayou) who has joined the United States relay squad. Boring.
Of course one wouldn’t indulge in headline-extrapolation if most of them weren’t self-explanatory; and they don’t get much plainer than ‘Pakistan’s Only Female Athlete Has Humble Ambitions”, posted on the website of the Saudi-based Arab News.
As South Africa observed Woman’s Day, Sumera Zahoor told AFP that she has come to terms with the impossibility of winning a medal in the 1,500m event, and now wants only to finish ahead of last place to save herself from shame. Go get ’em, wildcat.
One can’t blame her, though. Already considered a feminist paramilitary cadre for running in poly-shorts rather than donning traditional black mosquito-netting, Zahoor’s best chance of settling ruffled patriarchal feathers is to reassess her humble ambitions, perhaps exchanging her second-last place for a healthy boy-child, which would be far more useful to everyone.
Still, Sumera’s obstacles seem slight next to the pressures bearing down on Rubab Reza, Pakistan’s only other female athlete. (Perhaps swimmers don’t count as athletes. Perhaps swimmers don’t count as people, what with all that shameful nakedness, all that tossing of long black hair.) 16-year-old Reza is keen and pragmatic, yet slightly apologetic, no doubt realising that she will be dragging herself into the wakes of better swimmers through a volume of water that could irrigate her country for five years.
But one wonders how much of her the folks back home will see. Turn it off, cousin Mahmood! Haven’t you read? The IOC president is sleeping with the athletes! He was a sailor. For Belgium. The worst kind. Look at the poor child, shivering in the shallow end. And don’t they know there are tigers about? They swim, those tigers. Oh child, come home! Come home and find a husband!