Problems brewing in Beijing?


The Detroit Red Wings have won the Stanley Cup. The Boston Celtics have won the NBA Championship. Tiger Woods is out for the remainder of the PGA season. The MLB All-Star game is a joke.

So what's next? Imminent disaster in Beijing if you ask me.

The 2008 Summer Olympics kick off in China in August and as a former member of the U.S. Track & Field Team, I am ecstatic to say the least.

There are however several major reasons to be concerned with Games this year and my biggest concerns have nothing to do with the athletic competition.

First let me briefly run down the athletic side of the events.

The ongoing legal sagas involving Marion Jones, Trevor Graham and Tim Montgomery have cast a huge shadow over the U.S. Track & Field organization.

It's hard to imagine who had the bigger fall from grace, Jones, who has been stripped of every medal she won since 2000, including the five medals she was awarded at the Sydney Games.

Montgomery, the former world record holder in the 100 meters, who not only found himself involved in a steroid scandal, but subsequently faced criminal charges for money laundering and eventually was found guilty of dealing heroin. Sheesh!

Trevor Graham, who has coached 14 members of the U.S. Track & Field team, including Jones, Montgomery and C.J. Hunter, the latter two who were both married to Jones at some point and found guilty of doping, has been involved in the federal investigation of the infamous BALCO organization. Graham was found guilty of lying to Federal investigators last month.

Like many MLB players U.S. track athletes will arrive in Beijing with the baggage of having some of the most prominent members of the U.S. track & filed disgraced and banned from the sport.

It won't help that in some of the premiere events of track & field, namely the 100 & 400 meter sprints, the long jump, and 1500 meter run, U.S. men will not only be underdogs to win, but could easily not even secure any medals at all.

There are a few women who could salvage the 'name brand' events for the U.S. Keep an eye out for Torri Edwards, Shannon Rowbury and Porscha Lucas to make some noise on the oval.

Michael Phelps will again carry most of the load the Men's Swimming Team, while the women will not have any clear cut favorites although they do have gold medal potential in most of the short races.

Then of course there's this year's version of USA Basketball's dream teams on both the mens and womens side.

The women who have won three straight olympic gold medals should skate through the olympics and having Candace Parker on the roster just makes the inevitability of a U.S. victory even more...well inevitable.

The Mens team, while as strong as we've seen since the 1996 Olympic team, will still have it's hands full trying to bring home a gold medal.

But despite all of the potential for great athletic competition at the highest level, there is a deafening roar that is louder than any cheers you will hear from any grouop of spectattors who attend the games and that roar is the sound of worldwide protest for the games being held in Beijing to begin with.

It makes you wonder, in lieu of all of the worldwirde protests to China's hosting the Olympics, how in the world did they ever get awarded the games to begin with?

Believe it or not, this is yet another tragedy that the world can blame on the Bush administration.

In March of 200,1 a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the U.S plane, along with 24 American crewman to make an emergency landing at a Chinese air base. All of the crewmen, including 3 women and 8 "Chinese codebreakers" were taken into custody and evidence suggested that the Chines government had begun stripping the US plane of sensitive material.

Prior to the event, the US had been adamant about blocking any bid made by China to host the Olympics, citing China's civil rights violations record. China, in response to US condemnation, issued a 200 page document detailing the US's own civil rights record (touché china, touché).

Neverthelss, three months after the spyplane crash landed on a Chinese air base, Beijing was indeed awarded the 2008 Olympic Games, without objection from the US and despite claims from some in IOC that Paris and Toronto, also in the bidding process, were technically superior cities.

Did the US cave in to China in order to get their plane and crewmen back home safely and in a timely matter? If they did, was it the right thing to do? Of course we'll never know the answers to those questions.

What we do know however, is that as we get closer to the opening ceremonies, the calls for protests and out right boycotts of the games have not only come from some the highest levels of international politics and media but some of these protests have taken a violent nature.

All of this public objection suggests that it is hard to believe the Olympics will go unmarred by some sort of international incident. In light of the climate of terrorism that has been fostered by the never ending conflict in Iraq and the resurgence of Al Queida, China, a nation not privy to allowing neither foreign media nor diplomats unimpeded access to much in their country has the potential to allow a tenuous situation to become hostile.

None of us want to see any athletes, officials or spectators put in harms way for the sake of some individual or group making a political statement. Unfortunately China is one of the few nations where the U.S. military and/or security will certainly find itself unwelcome.

Let us pray that the Olympics go off without a hitch and we are treated to athletic competition at the highest level, because with China's arrogant stand toward the international comunity, it's apparent disregard for the aspirations of it's population base and it's proximity to regions of the world where the enemies of America fester, we may need an act of God to make sure nothing tragic happens.