Picking Splinters

In an earlier column I mentioned part of the reason I find the Olympics such an amazing spectacle is the feats that these athletes achieve during the course of competition. The second reason I love the Olympics is because of the amazing stories taking place off the athletic surface, and several of those amazing stories brought themselves to the forefront of Olympic coverage this past week. These are the stories that remind us that there is far more to the Olympics than gold medals or world records. These are the stories that remind us of what’s really important in life. In this case: character and family.

Last weekend after American Carly Patterson captured the U.S.’s first gymnastics individual all-around gold since Mary Lou Retton, Russian silver-medalist/diva/ice queen Svetlana Khorkina threw a hissy fit that she didn’t take first place, basically insinuating that the judges had predetermined that an American would win.

While I agree that the judging, in all judged Olympic events, has been a little shady in the past (cough, cough … Soviet Block), there are two ways to conduct yourself if you feel you’ve been short changed. Khorkina’s reaction was one of them. Fellow countryman Alexei Nemov chose a different route.

Monday night in the men’s high bar competition, Nemov got completely hosed by the judges, receiving an absurdly low score for a routine the NBC commentators remarked had, forgive the pun, “raised the bar” for the event. The low score basically put him out of the running for a medal. The announcers railed on the judges, but more persuasively the crowd, booed and whistled and hissed until the score was changed. What was amazing was Nemov’s conduct. He never so much as grimaced when he saw his low marks, nor did he throw a temper tantrum when the event ended with him out of the medals. Furthermore, when the crowd continued to boo after his score was amended (to a still-too-low figure) and American Paul Hamm (who had won a controversial gold in the men’s all-around) was set to begin his routine, Nemov got up on the podium, gestured his thanks to the supporters and then asked them to quiet down so Hamm could begin his routine. Now that’s class. Hopefully Khorkina had her note pad out.

One of the storylines that NBC always drums up for the Olympics is the bond between athletes and their parents. This year, for the duration of the swimming competition they’ve shown Michael Phelps’ mother almost as often as they’ve shown the underwater wunderkind himself. But far and away the most touching instance of parental involvement I’ve seen thus far is the attendance of U.S. sprinter Lauryn Williams’ father in Athens.

Now there’s nothing particularly unusual about the fact that her father, David, had to raise money to see his little girl go for the gold. What is notable is the fact that David Williams is currently battling leukemia … and he’s on dialysis. But neither of those barriers prevented him from watching his daughter capture the silver medal in the women’s 100m last week, and when she did he couldn’t stop jumping up and down. When the race finished he was jumping. When NBC interviewed her, he was jumping. When NBC returned from a commercial break he was jumping. For a man who is fighting a daily battle to ward off death, at that moment, he was completely filled with life. All because of his daughter.

To close with a flashback, one of my favorite Olympic memories, and I have a lot of them, was British runner Derek Redmond’s performance in Barcelona in 1992. Four year’s earlier in Seoul, South Korea Redmond watched his medal hopes disappear when a ruptured Achilles tendon forced him to withdraw from the 400m just 10 minutes before the competition. In 1992 he was again thwarted by injury, tearing his hamstring just 175 meters from insuring a place in the finals. But Redmond refused to give up, rose to his feet and began hopping on one foot towards the finish line. Meanwhile, his father, Jim, sprinted down from his seat near the Olympic torch, flew past fans and leapt onto the track, two security personnel trailing behind him.

“That’s my son out there,” Jim Redmond yelled to the guards as he closed the distance between him and his pain-wracked son. “And I’m going to help him.”

When his father finally reached him, Derek Redmond began to cry as he and his father staggered the remaining distance to the finish line where they embraced and wept along with everyone else who witnessed the spectacle of unparalleled concern and love. That scene still gets me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I seem to have something in my eye.