Distasteful Canadian Media takes a stab at Chinese Athletes.
Halfpipe gold medallist Xuetong Cai of China is flanked by compatriots Zhifeng Sun (left), silver, and Xu Cheng, bronze as they stand on the podium at the FIS snowboard world cup Friday, Jan. 22, 2010 in Stoneham Que. (CP) Source: CIV
We knew during the Beijing Olympics the media took every opportunity to mock the Chinese Athletes just about anything they could find.
When it comes to talking about Chinese athletes, it seems like every article must reemphasize the words 'government-funded', 'state owned', and rather acknowledging the concept of dedication, hard work and discipline as athletic qualities in the Chinese they prefer to call it 'cultural oppression' or even 'inhuman torture'.
The same rhetorical defamation recycles itself again and in the 2010 Vancouver Winter games the media has taken another stab at it.
CIV blogger caught an article in the Globe and Mail that containing an eye sore article would frame these accented foreigners to reinforce some racial stereotyping and inferiority complex caricatures.
"Their lack of English and their difficult names forced their Canadian halfpipe instructors to improvise. The instructors gave the teenagers nicknames such as Sun and Cliff, based on natural features seen from the mountain."
Or comments like these reinforces inferiority of Asian people and that they don't belong on snowboards.
"That's not the heart and soul of snowboarding," says Dominique Vallée, a member of Canada's halfpipe team. "It's not a boot camp, and it's not at all costs."
Nevertheless, the Chinese invasion has forced the sport's old guard to face a choice: Raise the ante, or learn to lose.
Perhaps bringing up the western colonial fantasies is unnecessary and due to bad athleticism and arrogance Chinese are not true snowboarders?
Perhaps there needs to be a little more care before defining athleticism or "heart and soul" to others.
CIV's response:
“Darkly comic”? Yes, these atheletes might not understand the “rebellious” nature and/or history of snowboarding in the West. But their relentless effort into training of the sports — and all kinds of sports — should be appreciated and not laughed at. Isn’t that the spirits of the Olympics? If westerners believe any sports should be prescribed in western cultural terms and that people from other cultures should abide by the western definitions, then such sports should NOT be included in the Olympics. Such sports should remain as geographically-specific. Don’t make it an international one that supposed to be as inclusive as possible.
I’d say to the ego-centric westerners: Redefine the meaning of the “Olympics” to be exclusively a western game. Before then, don’t pretend to be fair and open on one hand and teasing other peoples who are interpreting sports in other terms as being “at odds” with their “traditions”.
Read the full article at Chinese in Vancouver
Re: Distasteful Canadian Media takes a stab at Chinese Athletes.
This is predictable chauvinistic tripe from the Canada media--almost so hackneyed that it's funny.
So much for Canada's Olympic hospitality.
Instead, Anglo-Americans spew their instinctive Yellow Peril racism in sports.
Canada would do better to take a closer look at its role in enabling the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, and the deadly consquences of Canada chauvinism.
from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/olym-f16.shtml
"Given the unprecedented speed of the track, elementary safety considerations should have dictated extended practice times to familiarize athletes with the challenges they were facing. This is especially true for athletes from smaller, poorer countries, who inevitably have less exposure to cutting-edge track design than their more affluent colleagues.
Kumaritashvili, according to the Wall Street Journal, “told his father he was terrified of the track before doing the run that killed him.”
The ugly reality is that Canadian authorities stringently restricted practice runs to boost their team’s “home-field advantage.” Canadian athletes were given nearly 10 times as many runs as non-Canadians.
The preferential training arrangements for Canadian athletes did not apply to the sliding events alone. A major row erupted in 2009 when US skaters were denied access to the Olympic skating facilities in Richmond, BC. The story has been the same across the spectrum of sporting events."