You may have already seen this, as it’s (rightfully) the web’s favourite thing today.
Side note: it’d be cool to run a blog or Twitter feed called “The Web’s Favourite Thing” which posted once daily with the meme du jour. There are a lot of sites which broadcast a lot of popular webby stuff (I saw this video on Geekosystem), but few that curate very conservatively. Devour is one such site.
Don’t worry, I had no idea who she was until last week either. It turns out she’s a Paraguayan lingerie model (that site is moderately unsafe for work and has cheesy auto-playing music). However, she recently rose to fame (or, at least Internet fame) as an eager fan of Paraguay’s World Cup team. She’s been photographed in a rather snug Paraguay jersey cheering fervently for her nation’s team. Her outfit apparently had no pockets, as her phone (a Nokia E71, in case you were wondering) was conspicuously nestled in her bosom.
Here is the most safe for work photo I could find of her:
She must have a savvy publicist. It’s an obvious strategy, I suppose, to position an attractive model at an event in close proximity to many (male) photographers. The bonus here has been Paraguay’s surprising run of success. They beat Japan to get to the quarter-finals. They face Spain on Saturday, and they’re likely to lose.
Millions of fans are hoping otherwise, of course. Because Ms. Riqulme has promised to run naked through the streets of Asuncion in the unlikely event that Paraguay wins the World Cup. This is an another savvy PR trick, riffing on a similar promise that famous (and, I should add, portly and middle-aged) footballing legend and Argentinian coach Diego Maradona made.
Unfortunately, the odds favour Maradona’s nude run.
As you may have noticed, I haven’t had a lot to say about the Olympics. I went to a few hockey games (including one courtesy of Tourism BC–thanks, guys) and a biathlon event (where Jamessnapped a bunch of photos). I’ve generally enjoyed the Games (though I’ve got enough friends opposed to them to understand their downside), but I’m happy to see them completed.
I’ve watched more hockey than anything else, much of it with friends and family. In doing so, I’ve discussed the same two topics a number of times:
Is it appropriate to run up the score, as the Canadian women’s hockey team did in a 18-0 thumping of the Slovakian team in their opener?
Given the constant dominance of Canada and the USA, should women’s hockey be in the Olympics?
As it happens, I’ve summarized both arguments in the comments on this post by Rebecca. I thought I’d reproduce them here, with some minor tweaks.
Running Up the Score
This is a common complaint levelled at international tournaments of all sorts–it’s not unique to hockey (I’m reminded of a certain 31-0 victory by Australia over American Samoa in World Cup qualifying). The optics aren’t good.
Here’s why teams do it: the number of goals you score (your ‘goals for’ number) is usually the tie-breaking statistics when you have the same number of points as another team. This is obviously hugely important if that tiebreaker determines, say, who advances to the next round. It may have lesser importance, too. For example, it can determine who gets home field (or ice) advantage.
Also, from a sports psychology perspective, if a team ‘goes easy’ on a lesser team, they risk carrying that behaviour into the subsequent games against tougher opponents. As coaches say, “you have to play your own game, not your opponents’”. As such, ‘taking your foot off the gas’ can be risky.
The Future of Women’s Hockey in the Olympics
Last Friday, IOC President Jack Rogge (who feels a little fascist, doesn’t he?) remarked on the lopsided results in women’s hockey:
Hours before the gold medal final between the United States and Canada, dominant powers in a tournament where they routed outmatched rivals, Rogge said the Olympics can bear the lopsidedness for only so long.
“There is a discrepancy. Everyone agrees with that,” Rogge said. “This may be the investment period for women’s ice hockey. I would personally give them more time to grow but there must be a period of improvement. “We cannot continue without improvement.”
Accusations of sexism were levelled at Rogge, more because of his comments on the Canadian women’s celebration (which almost certainly were sexist) than the sports future in the Olympics. Shelley Fralic’s poorly-argued–she ignores the question of parity altogether–piece is a good example of the response Rogge’s remarks received.
To separate gender politics from sport, imagine the following scenario. Let’s pretend that snowball fights are an Olympic event:
For four Olympic Games in a row, you know with near certainty that the US and Canada Snowball Fighting teams will meet in the final. They’ve met in three of four gold-medal games. They have almost never lost to any other team in the tournament (Canada has once and the USA twice, I think), and they’ve outplayed all other opponents by a considerable margin. The final is exciting, but every snowball fight up to that point is pretty much a foregone conclusion. It’s a sure bet that at the Snowball Fighting finals in 2014, it’ll be USA and Canada again.
The mistake the IOC made was permitting women’s hockey to join when they did. I assume that they expected other nations to catch up to the USA and Canadian women, but that simply hasn’t happened over the last 14 years. It’s not all that surprising, considering that the much more popular men’s game only has, at best, eight or ten competitive teams.
If they decided to remove women’s hockey, the decision wouldn’t be without precedent. Softball was recently removed from the Summer Olympics because of America’s dominance of the sport through four consecutive Games.
The common counter-argument I’ve heard is “what better way to motivate other countries than with the promise of an Olympic medal?” This seems pretty specious, as it could be applied to any sport–no matter how niche or regionally lopsided–as a reason for inclusion in the Olympics.
I’ve always enjoyed watching Canada/USA games. And the increase in talent among those two teams in the past 14 years has been remarkable.
I don’t know what the right decision is for the future of the sport, but if you’re a fan of parity and unpredictability, you’re not a fan of having women’s hockey in the Olympics.
Watching and reading coverage of the Olympics, I’ve observed a lot of projections and comparisons involving Canada’s medal haul for 2010 and previous years (the latest example was in a Slate piece by Dahlia Lithwick). I’ve a lot of graphics showing medal totals for the previous Olympics held in Canada.
It’s a rich vein for the media, and a natural one. After all, it’s a sports competitions, where achievements are measured empirically.
I got to thinking about whether those were fair comparisons to make. Surely the number of medals has grown over the past, say, 35 years. And surely the number of participating nations and athletes has grown as well. So, I did what I always do when I wonder about something. I made a chart (click for gold medal bigness):
It shows the number of medals up for grabs at each Olympics, and also the number of nations participating. Interestingly, since 1976, the number of available medals and nations attending have grown at similar rates–they’re at 175% what they were. As you can see, the rate of medals has, recent years, exceeded the growth of participating nations.
And then there’s the number of athletes participating. In 1976, there were roughly 30 athletes per event. In 2010, that’s still the case.
My analysis is pretty rudimentary, but it seems like the amount of competition has stayed consistent over the past 35 years. It’s no more or less difficult to win a medal at the Olympics than it was when I was born.
What do you know? I wasn’t a Debbie Downer after all. Media folks, compare medal counts until your graphic designer cramps up.
There’s been plenty of talk lately about how social media creators will fit in with the 2010 Olympics. Dave Olson wrote an open letter to VANOC Media Relations and Press Operations:
In brief, we’d like to have a conversation about how to allow fans and amateur media makers to document their Olympic experience while keeping out of the way of the IOC IP lawyers…
We are aware of your obligations to media rights holders and are seeking to provide an entirely different sort of coverage than the accredited media provide. We are not looking to cover events per se but are instead interested in covering the cultural stories, athletes’ families’ stories, and stories from fans who saved and traveled from around the world for this experience.
This feels like a good place to start. As Dave says, social media types aren’t expecting all-access passes to the gold medal hockey games. He’s right to point out that there’s a big hole to fill in the media coverage for such an event. I was thinking about it, and drew this little Venn diagram:
The CTVs and CBCs are going to have the major, breaking news covered. It’s all that green space–that’s where social media creators can live. Through various channels, I’m seeing several ways forward for benefits for both parties. Social media creators get some tools, resources and access to help with their citizen journalism efforts, and VANOC enjoys a whole new layer of news coverage. Such a partnership would also highlight Vancouver’s place as a global for new media, citizen journalism and the like.
Earlier this week, Vancouver’s 2010 Olympic mascots were revealed. You can see and hear the mascots through this microsite.
Each mascot will say their (his? her?) name aloud when you mouse over the text of their name. When I heard Sumi say his or her name, I heard something of a mid-nineties rave in it. Just a hint, really.
I spent an hour with GarageBand, and produced 67 seconds of pure Olympic magic. To play the song, just click the icon in the box below:
I know it’s really awful, but I had tremendous fun making it. GarageBand rocks out. As it were.
The images come courtesy of The Province. I tried to go to the official Olympics site, but it’s down for ‘scheduled maintenance’. Hmm…either that’s the standard ‘server crashed’ message, or they picked a really bad time to do maintenance. I’m guessing the former.
UPDATE: Their site is redirecting somewhere now, and you can see the mascots dance and say their names. It’s freakin’ weird, if you ask me.
