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Home > Jeff Schultz > Archives > 2008 > August > 09
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Difficult to see clear through the fog
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Juyongguan, China — When the various beleaguered dynasties in Chinese history were convincing themselves that a wall might actually cure themselves of those pesky Mongolians, it probably never occurred to them that they would be mocked centuries later by a goofy guy in spandex.
“If I was in charge back then, I wouldn’t have built something like this,” U.S. cyclist David Zabriskie said as he looked up at the apparently not-so-Great Wall. “It’s just like a waste of time. I mean, you can get over it with a grappling hook and a ladder, right?”
Cycling at the Wall. Maybe this can be the start of some new series of historical Olympic mutations. When the Games move to London in 2012: table tennis at Stonehenge.
One day after Opening Ceremonies, the Olympic cycling road race. It started in downtown Beijing at Yongdingmen Gate, the former entrance to Beijing’s old city wall, and finished 2,200 feet up a mountain. It was the first time the event began and ended in different locations, the local organizing committee figured they would make the most of it. So the finish line was placed at the JuYongGuan Pass, adjacent to the Great Wall.
About 800 years ago, Genghis Khan plowed through the Wall and took over northern China and, well, that should have sent a strong enough message that a winding and deteriorating wall wasn’t a great defense, even if it did stretch 4,000 miles. But when you combine smog, heat, humidity and an uphill climb over 245 kilometers (152 miles), it doesn’t make for great art.
Players gasped, coughed and generally wilted. After dropping out, Stefan Schumacher of Germany said: “It feels like you’re at 3,000 meters because of the air. You cannot breathe. The air is thick, and there is smog.” Juan Jose Haedo of Argentine said: “It feels like you have hot cream all over your body.”
The greater Beijing area doesn’t necessarily have the world’s worst air. There are plenty of nuclear-waste facilities. But you wonder why IOC president Jacques Rogge has gone to such great lengths to spin this matter.
His comment the other day: “The fog you see is based on the basis of humidity and heat. It does not mean to say that this fog is the same as pollution. It can be pollution, but the fog doesn’t mean necessarily that it is pollution.”
Rogge speaks five languages. Maybe it made more sense in Dutch.
Four members of the U.S. cycling team arrived in Beijing wearing masks over their nose and mouth — presumably to protect them from Rogge’s fog. That didn’t go over real well, and the USOC strongly suggested they issue a quick apology.
So it follows that when other team members were asked about the smog Saturday, they verbally tiptoed a response. “I’ve got to approach it with a little bit of reserve after the other members of the team got in a mess,” Zabriskie said.
But he couldn’t help himself. When reminded of Rogge’s fog comments, he said, “It’s best to give things like this a happy name. … We do the same thing in America. We call it haze.”
Zabriskie has lived in California. Doesn’t he know what smog looks like?
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s looks … familiar.”
If nothing else, Saturday’s race finally ended the myth that the Wall is visible from outer space. Because, like, I stood on what many consider the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” and I had an easier time seeing the other seven.
If walls could talk, what would this one say? How about, “Please, just let me be.”
Some cyclists sort of got into the backdrop. Christian Vande Velde of the United States said of riding the course through the Wall’s tunnels, “You feel like you’re going through a fake amusement ride.”
Probably a safe analogy.
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