One time I was taking the airport shuttle and to my amazement saw some yo-yo bring a caged rooster on board. It was the first time I had ever seen a shuttlecock.

Seriously though.

All jokes aside, I was thinking last week that I didn’t remember badminton being an Olympic sport. I asked the air around me when I saw it on the TV schedule, “What the fuck? I remember nothing about this!

I remembered back around 2008, they were talking about pole dancing. Making it an Olympic sport. I exploded in a blog in which I used far more swear words than I do here. One of the most humiliating things women do for a living. Most do it for the pay and tips, not because they want to. So an Olympic sport? Fuck no! You kidding me? It would mock everyone who did it in the semi-nude, perhaps a considerable number of them driven to go further for money, getting addicted to drugs and dying too young. Don’t mock them. Don’t judge them. They’re trapped and it’s not their fault. Movies don’t help much. Cops always go to them for snitching and it’s a mess. Real life? Real life is fucked up.

I’m sorry if my opening joke led you to believe that this was going to be a cheerful post. It won’t be and I don’t have the power to write those. That’s a superpower I don’t have. My personal Lex Luthor kneecapped me with enough kryptonite to last three lifetimes.

With that established, however, the news from the Olympics is, to say the least, mixed. After all, I’ve been watching the Games since 1968. I saw the Black Power salute during the medal ceremony and everything. It’s magnificent and unforgettable, watching that kind of history unfold.

Unfortunately being the first at some things isn’t the same as finishing in first place in a sports competition. Smith and Carlos had to live with the harsh consequences of their act of courage. When Smith later said that his intention was to call attention not just to the injustices to people of color in the United States, but human rights in general, few found him to be genuine. I remember years later, the footage of the ceremony being shown and the accompanying commentary being negative.

Smith and Carlos were banned from the Olympic village, and this only on the threat of the Olympic president, a wad of lunch scraps by the name of Avery Brundage. This rat bait was the same one who was at the Munich games and had no problem with the Nazi’s salute. He tried to say that it was the national symbol of a country, whereas Smith and Carlos used their raised fists for political reasons which was against the spirit and tradition of the Olympics.

This serious miscarriage of justice and human rights was applauded by prominent people, some of which would surprise you. But in 1968 that kind of verbal and written abuse was very much in play. The pair didn’t give up, though. They were banned from the 1972 Olympics but made the best of it. Look them up and see the wondrous things they did with their own country heaping hate and derision on them.

The silver medalist was Australian. He wore a patch showing that he was with Smith and Carlos in their efforts and the mission they had taken on.

He was not welcomed home. He was treated horribly and yet he still stands with Smith and Carlos as heroes, champions for equality and not a sport. When he died, it is touching that Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at his funeral.

History doesn’t usually forgive and honor those who were first. It happens but it’s rare. Usually the first fall into dishonorable obscurity. History rarely tells their stories. The following summer, Neil Armstrong was the first man, the first human, to step a foot on the surface of the moon. That’s a first that was never given a doubt. He fulfilled Kennedy’s prophecy. He put glue on the back of the picture in the scrapbook that proved we had beaten the Soviets. I would give you five of him for one each of Smith and Carlos. What the Apollo 11 astronauts did was so dangerous that landing, surviving on and leaving the lunar surface was a huge defeat of the odds. In other words, they stood a greater chance of dying than doing it and returning to Earth. Men of courage for sure. Men of honor, yes.

But Tommie Smith and John Carlos faced death threats that wouldn’t quit when they returned from Mexico City. That’s from one act of courage and honor that should be regarded as every bit as historic and important to history.

True Heroes Are Made, Not Born, and Courage Sometimes Means You Do Nothing At All

I have not often been truly shocked by anything in sports, because that usually means seeing something tragic like the death of Dale Earnhardt. I was watching that race. His collision with the wall didn’t look bad. The car didn’t do barrel rolls or fly apart in midair. He just hit the wall. It was deceptively harmless in appearance to me. I could see some minor injuries but that’s all; there was nothing in my experience to make me think the worst. Then the announcement that he’d died immediately came and that the crash was one of the worst kind in motor sports. His skull was fractured at the base.

We joke about watching races just to see the crashes. But it’s never really been funny. After Earnhardt’s death I never heard the joke again and have never really kept up with Nascar.

The accident was exactly that. An accident. And those happen. But I wonder what could have been had he sat out that race. If he’d had some intuition that he shouldn’t drive.

When I watched the qualifying round of women’s gymnastics for the Olympic team, I saw something that honestly shocked me. As I watched, I was even vocal, a rare thing for me. Things like “Oh my God!” Came from my mouth. I was seeing the impossible being done.

1972 Munich Games

I’d seen impossible things before. In the games of the summer Olympics in 1972, American swimmer Mark Spitz won 7 gold medals. In those wins he also broke the speed records of each event. That achievement was impossible. And he did it.

In Women’s Gymnastics we fell in love with Olga Korbut. Frank Shorter was hoaxed by a fake runner who appeared to enter the stadium first, but was quickly removed.

Badminton made its first appearance as an Olympic sport.

Avery Brundage was presiding over the Games for the last time, and there was no shortage of controversy as a result. Brundage, the leftovers after another human being was born, ran a crooked show. And he had lots of help. I know of but don’t remember American athletes being lied to about event start-times and missing them. I do remember the American basketball team being straight-up and openly, in front of God and everyone, cheated out of a win by referees who made the final seconds of the game get replayed until the Soviets won. Cheating, bold as you like. The men’s pole vault was a fiasco centered on the materials used for poles, basically forcing American athletes to use poles they never wielded before.

And since the Games ended in September just before school started, I had lost my love. That’s when it happened, and that’s why they called it “Black September”.

In an act of sheer barbarism, Palestinian terrorists under the terror group named Black September took 11 Jewish athletes hostage in their living quarters. A rescue attempt failed. Every hostage was killed. Three terrorists escaped, but it’s believed that Mossad agents tracked and killed two of them and search to this day for the third. It is not hyperbole that if you incur the wrath of the Mossad, you haven’t long to live. And they never, ever give up.

Brundage, the walking afterbirth, insisted that the games be completed. That’s some cold shit right there, because I don’t know of anyone who had their heart in watching after that. My school year seemed to start out bleakly and with no memory of color; I saw things in monochrome and felt empty. My capacity for empathy and heartbreak had been well developed by then.

1976 Montreal

Two things come to my mind first: Nadia Comaňeci winning the first perfect 10 scores ever, making the world fall in love with her. Hard to watch without emotion, she was merely 14 years old and “Nadia’s Theme” for her floor exercises became a pop single hit in the U.S.

Second, a superhuman performance by Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto on the rings after breaking his knee in the floor competition. His dismount was exquisite and he nailed the landing, hiding his excruciating pain. That’s a champ right there.

Brundage was gone. It showed.

Trinidad and Tobago won their first Gold. I thought that was pretty cool.

After ’76 I never bothered much with the Olympics except for the winter games. Yes, I did see the bobsled race when the Jamaican team crashed. I thought they were all dead. Heroes. Guys who did something everyone said they couldn’t do.

Champs and heroic athletes have always come to the games to compete in the spirit of the couple of weeks they’re allowed to pit themselves against countries with the rules of honor in place and high expectations. They’re larger than life. I admire and have admired so many. Although I prefer the Winter Games with the downhill slalom, bobsledding and the suicidal luge and ski jump, I’m watching a bit of the summer goodness this year.

Simone Biles did wonders in qualifying. Then, in early competition of the vault, she did poorly. She dropped out of the event. I know only what’s in the above-linked article; what exactly bothered her, I don’t know. I expected great things from her after seeing her do miraculous things in qualifying, but that might not happen now. She may return and she may not. It had to be a difficult decision to make.

After some time in the locker room, she pulled on her tracksuit and cheered her team on. Later still she said to the press that she wasn’t there mentally and her future participation in the Games was uncertain. She spoke clearly and powerfully.

Simone Biles is by far the greatest hero of any Olympic Games. She’s a role model for young women and athletes, but for the rest of us as well. I couldn’t have more admiration and respect for her. It takes great courage before the world to announce that you need to look to your mental health. Especially because on social media she’s taking loads of abuse. Names like “loser” and “quitter”, and more are being thrown at her with great malice.

And that’s no surprise to me. While her team and the American Olympic Committee back her all the way, the world still considers mental illness as a fake, a copout or a badge of real sickness that earns the average person the subhuman treatment that’s still the standard in American healthcare. Without knowing more, I can say no more. I’m not an arrogant armchair diagnostician. The particulars are her business and no one else’s. I can only feel sympathy, solidarity and pray that she gets the help that she needs.

But I will always see her as courageous, dedicated and honest. A most honorable young woman whom history will not forget. God bless you, simone. You are the first to place mental health above a gold medal. I raise my glass in your honor.