Arabs, Persians, and Olympians
In this fractious world, it would be nice if Muslim countries were to send vigorous teams to the Olympics, as did the Russians, East Germans, and Chinese during the cold war, which was settled peacefully. At Vancouver, we noticed one Turkish figure skater.
To be fair, outside of Dubai’s Snowdome, it’s hard to find practice runs for the giant slalom or the super-G amid the dunes and deserts of the Middle East. Yet they don’t do much at the summer games either.
Gulf Games
Instead, they organized the Islamic Solidarity Games as their own Olympics, to be held next month in Iran. But now that’s been cancelled.
We’ll have to ask Steve Alber to read the announcement, as he puts it, “in the original Persion,” but it seems that the Iranians engraved the award medals and the official logo with the phrase “Persian Gulf,” hinting at their intention to rule the entire region, so the Arab states pulled out. So much for solidarity. Lech Walessa’s people can set aside their patent infringement suit, at least for the moment.
Also, this split might present a good opening to encourage the Arabs, if not the Persians, to rethink the Olympics. For the winter games, we could offer them training facilities here; however, the most delicate negotiations would involve the events, the outfits, and the judging criteria.
An Unholy Trifecta
Ice dancing, for example, simultaneously violates three Islamic prohibitions – of dancing, of music, and of skater’s costumes which brazenly reveal flesh in the proscribed region between the navel and knee. The Arabs would no doubt demand Sharia judging, which would disqualify all of their rivals (for moral reasons, of course) and award the gold medal to a Saudi woman covered head to toe in a burqa whose performance consists of standing stock still, unaccompanied by music.
Their burqas might also cause havoc, nay, grievous injuries in the slalom and in short-track speed skating. In cross-country skiing, the vision-impaired burqa battalion would spend most of its time bumping into trees, lost in the adjacent woodlands.
Torrents of Arabians
Every turn on the bobsled track would be strewn with casualties from top-heavy four-woman sleds — piled high with redundant riders like the Joads heading west — because Muslim women are not permitted to drive except in company with their husbands or fathers.
Perhaps we’d best focus on the Summer Olympics and, even there, stick with the men’s events.
It’s hard to see how it would engender world peace to have female Muslim swimmers drowning in their waterlogged fabrics or burqa-winged pole vaulters crash landing like gooney birds.
Inglorious in Greece
Even in the men’s events, the Iranians won’t like the Marathon. It will just remind them that this race commemorates their attempt under Darius the Persian to conquer the land of Mount Olympus 2500 years ago, and how they got their asses kicked.
News of the Persian defeat was carried the 26 miles to Athens by a runner called Pheidippides after the sound of his sandals slapping on the flat rocks of Attica as he hurried on his way.