Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain — Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire
The official count says the United States came in first with 46 Gold Medals, followed by China with 38, and Great Britain in third position with 29.
But Reuters argues that, if we look at all this another way, taking all the medals won by countries of which Queen Elizabeth II is head of state, the total is really a bit different.
Thanks to her role as head of state for 16 countries, Queen Elizabeth is the world leader whose athletes have won more gold medals at London 2012 than any other and in her diamond jubilee year too. That’s 48 golds for Elizabeth to Obama’s 46.
Alongside Britain’s 29 golds, only six of the queen’s other countries were needed to top the medal count with seven from Australia, five from New Zealand, four from Usain Bolt and his fellow Jamaicans and one each from Bahamas, Canada and Grenada.
But what’s a piddling 48 Gold Medals?
Pingflux suggests counting historically and looking at the results by Empire. The British Empire does decently, achieving a tie for second place (55 Gold Medals each) with the Roman Empire. But the real winner may be a bit of a surprise.
The real winner of the 2012 Olympics proves to be Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire with a whopping 102 Gold Medals, 285 total.
While American Sanya Richards-Ross was accepting the gold medal for winning the 400-meter dash, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt was giving an interview.
The world’s fastest man, a Jamaican who won the 100-meter dash, stopped what he was doing to listen to the Star-Spangled Banner.
Instead of continuing to talk to the interviewer, he turned around, pointed at the flag, and indicated to the reporter that he would like to watch in silence.
Video of Bolt’s interview has gone viral.
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Of course, not everybody feels the same way about the American National Anthem.
NBC’s Chris Collinsworth prods Basketball player Kobe Bryant (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) with an audible sneer to remember that public expressions of patriotism are no longer appropriate.
Collinsworth: Is that a ‘cool’ thing to say, in this day and age? That you love your country, and that you’re fighting for the red, white and blue? It seems sort of like a day gone by(?)
Bryant: No, it’s a cool thing for me to say. I feel great about it, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I mean, this is a tremendous honor.
The original Olympic Games were played by competitors representing a variety of Greek cities sharing a common civilization, culture, religion, and ethical perspectives. Having a lot more sense than modern Europeans and Americans, the Greeks did not invite barbarian nations to compete or to host games.
Barbarian participation in competition is a firmly established part of the modern day Olympics. But the contemporary Olympic committee ought to make a policy of refusing to allow the Olympic Games ever to be hosted by totalitarian or non-European countries, period.
The 1936 Nuremburg Olympics, long ago, demonstrated the unseemly manner in which the spectacle of Olympic competition could be appropriated to glorify a criminal regime and to legitimize in the eyes of the world its despicable ideology.
The 1988 Seoul Olympics featured flagrant cheating by host country judges on behalf of native athletes, and ought to have made clear the undesirable problems associated with trying to conduct fair competitions under the authority of representatives of non-European cultures where the rule of objective law is unknown and in which “face” is valued far above integrity.
Predictably enough, the Red Chinese Olympics are proving to be another carefully orchestrated pageant of deceptive spectacle glorifying the Chinese State and its authoritarian regime, and cheating in competition and judging is well underway.
Yahoo Sports explains that, though fireworks were actually used at the Beijing Olympic Games opening ceremonies, the astonishing display broadcast around the world on television was faked, combining computer generated images with prerecorded shots of fireworks.
Defending gold medalists Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh gave the chief executive some pointers. Then after a good play, in the tradition of female volleyballers, May-Treanor turned, bent over slightly and offered her bikinied rear-end for the 43rd president to slap.
“Mr. President,” she said, “want to?”
Want to has nothing to do with it in public life.
As the son of a president, a husband of nearly 37 years, the father of two daughters, the subject of some attempted tabloid exposes and a seasoned political veteran, who is not a female athlete but knows that every camera for a half-mile is trained on him, Bush wisely chose instead to brush his hand across the small of May-Treanor’s back.
Aug. 9: 3-Day: Dressage–2:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. on USA
Aug. 11: 3-Day: Cross- Country–6:00pm-8:00pm OXYGEN
Aug. 12: 3-Day: Stadium Team Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 13: Dressage–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 14: Dressage Team Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 15: Show Jumping–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 16: Dressage Individual–5:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. MSNBC
Aug. 17: Show Jumping Team Gold Medal Final 1st Round–10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m on NBC
Aug. 18: Show Jumping Team Gold Medal Final Round–6:00pm-8:00 p.m. OXYGEN
Aug. 19: Dressage Individual Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 21: Show Jumping Individual Gold Medal Final–10:00am-1:00 pm on NBC
John Murrell says foreign journalists arriving to cover the Olympics in Beijing are finding there’s more than air quality different about the local atmosphere.
Apparently, China’s promise that the 20,000 foreign journalists covering the Olympic Games would have unfettered Internet access is going the same way as its pledge to provide breathable air — up in smoke. …
Early arrivals at the main press center found themselves unable to access scores of sites on the usual topics the Chinese government prefers to keep quiet — among them Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square and the sites of Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers. “It has been our policy to provide the media with convenient and sufficient access to the Internet,†said Sun Weide, the chief spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee. “I believe our policy will not affect reporters’ coverage of the Olympic Games.†…
Meanwhile, Sen. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., says he has documents indicating that China has forced all the major foreign-owned hotels to install spying equipment that will monitor the Net activities of journalists, athletes’ families and guests during the Games and beyond. The Public Security Bureau’s order says failure to comply could bring financial penalties, suspension of Net access, or the loss of a license to operate a hotel in China. “These hotels are justifiably outraged by this order, which puts them in the awkward position of having to craft pop-up messages explaining to their customers that their Web history, communications, searches and key strokes are being spied on by the Chinese government,†Brownback said.
I’m sure the host country will put on a lovely tribute to the Olympic ideals during the opening ceremonies, but it’s going to be awfully hard not to gag a little while watching.
