Tuesday, February 23, 2010

What is WITH all the WHINING these days??

What happened to good sportsmanship? Am I really such an old fogey that I see something wrong with all this grumbling and sour grapes?

Last night, it was the Russian ice dancers who whined that the Canadian gold medal winners didn't really "dance" on the ice, they just skated, and therefore did not deserve the gold medal in ice dance. (I am assuming that they believed that they, the Russians, DID deserve it. I did not see where they mentioned the American silver medalists, probably conveniently forgetting that one more pair stood between them and the gold.)

Last week, it was another Russian, men's silver medalist Evgeni Plushenko, who grumbled that American Evan Lysacek should not have won gold because he does not have a quadruple jump, and therefore somehow is not a proper skater.

Umm... Scott Hamilton (who won gold in 1984) did not have a quad either.... Gosh darn. All these years he's been entertaining us, and he's been an improper skater all this time. Dang.

By contrast, American fourth-place ice dancers Tanith and Ben congratulated the medal winners, and if they had disagreement with the judges' decision, they did NOT display it in public. And this is how it should be.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

It's mainly because they had good coaches and that they are real Americans that they didn't complain. Nothing gets my goat faster than a loser who blames the loss on the ref, judge, anything but their lesser performance.
When I coached varsity high school soccer (12 years), when we lost I claimed the responsibility; when we won, I gave all credit to the athletes. We always congratulated the opponents in a loss and consoled the teams and coaches in a victory. Class and style. The American Way.

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