In a week where excel­lence was defined by gold, sil­ver and bronze, the race for the main­tain­ing san­i­ty podi­um was rage, mere­ly quak­ing with right­eous indig­na­tion, or tak­ing refuge in a state of amusement.

To begin with the lat­ter, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ened to delay the open­ing of a new bridge between Detroit and Wind­sor “until the Unit­ed States is ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed for every­thing we have giv­en them, and also, impor­tant­ly, Cana­da treats the Unit­ed States with the Fair­ness and Respect that we deserve.”
First­ly, respect has to be earned, not hand­ed over on demand, or in the form of gold-gild­ed  fake award. (See FIFA Peace Prize and  Undis­put­ed Cham­pi­on of Coal)
It also gen­er­al­ly works best when it’s reciprocated.
A good start would be not telling Cana­da how to con­duct its own for­eign pol­i­cy, as in rag­ing about Prime Min­is­ter Mark Carney’s new approach to Chi­na, which was prompt­ed in part by U.S. tar­iffs on Canada.
How­ev­er, the Trumpian rant that “the first thing Chi­na will do is ter­mi­nate ALL Ice Hock­ey being played in Cana­da, and per­ma­nent­ly elim­i­nate The Stan­ley Cup”, is such a ludi­crous man­i­fes­ta­tion of  lack of knowl­edge about Cana­da and Cana­di­ans, that it could have been a line in the 1995 com­e­dy “Cana­di­an Bacon”.
Declaim­ing that the U.S.  needs to acquire “at least one half” of the new bridge and get a cut of  rev­enue from tolls on a struc­ture built and paid for by Cana­da, sounds like some­thing from a satire on gangsters.
Maybe we could give Trump an award for best imi­ta­tion of Kid Sal­ly Palum­bo, the hap­less Mafioso in Jim­my Breslin’s “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”, who couldn’t  make a prof­it  run­ning a gas sta­tion, even when he stole customer’s cars.

                  INDIGNATION WORTHY

Ukrain­ian ath­lete Vla­dyslav Heraskevych was banned from com­pet­ing in the Olympic men’s skele­ton event because he want­ed to wear a hel­met with art­work depict­ing Ukrain­ian ath­letes killed dur­ing the Russ­ian invasion.
Inter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) pres­i­dent Kirsty Coven­try said the hel­met _”…is a pow­er­ful mes­sage of remem­brance, it’s a mes­sage of mem­o­ry, and no-one is dis­agree­ing with that.”
Accord­ing to the “ath­lete expres­sion guide­lines” in the IOC char­ter: “It is a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that sport at the Olympic Games is neu­tral and must be sep­a­rate from polit­i­cal, reli­gious and any oth­er type of inter­fer­ence. Specif­i­cal­ly, the focus on the field of play dur­ing com­pe­ti­tions and offi­cial cer­e­monies must be on cel­e­brat­ing ath­letes’ performances.”
On that basis, the ath­lete who was his country’s flag-bear­er at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, is being treat­ed as if he was as guilty of trans­gress­ing Olympic stan­dards for doping.
It will be of no imme­di­ate com­fort to Vla­dyslav Heraskevych and his legion of sup­port­ers, includ­ing fel­low Olympians, but those who have banned him are on the arguably wrong side of Olympic history.
At the 1968 Sum­mer Games in Mex­i­co City, black Amer­i­can ath­letes Tom­mie Smith and John Car­los stood on the podi­um as the nation­al anthem was played, bowed their heads and raised a black-gloved hand in silent protest in sup­port of civ­il rights in their country.
They were kicked off the U.S team, sent home, banned from sports and vil­i­fied  for decades.
In 2008, Smith and Car­los were hon­oured with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, pre­sent­ed annu­al­ly to ath­letes who “tran­scend sports”.
In con­trast, the ridicu­lous Gian­ni Infan­ti­no, head of world soc­cer and pre­sen­ter of the pre­tend  “peace award” to Trump, wants to lift the ban imposed on teams from Rus­sia and its ally Belarus over the inva­sion of Ukraine because it has “not achieved any­thing”. 

                   RAGE ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH

Apart from the mas­sive bonus it pro­vides to the indus­tries respon­si­ble for the pol­lu­tion that dri­ves cli­mate change, and affir­ma­tion for those who deny such a thing actu­al­ly exists, Infantino’s argu­ment is an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly suc­cinct sum­ma­tion of the Trump administration’s repeal of  the “endan­ger­ment find­ing” that pro­vid­ed “a sound legal basis to reg­u­late green­house gas­es under the Clean Air Act”.
An analy­sis by Berke­ley Earth con­clud­ed that the last 11 years have been the warmest on record.
Sci­en­tists are now firm­ly con­vinced that ris­ing CO2 and methane is alter­ing the cli­mate, with the effect of longer and more severe droughts, floods, hur­ri­canes and larg­er and more intense fires.
If the results of that could be lim­it­ed to the MAGA states, the rest of us  could choose between schaden­freude and pity, and get on with life reg­u­lat­ed by com­mon sense and the ben­e­fits of believ­ing sci­ence,  as opposed to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, will­ful denial of the obvi­ous  and enrich­ing bil­lion­aire polluters.
The sad fact that the rest of us are going to have to share, and suf­fer,  the results of what will pass for Amer­i­can cli­mate “laws”, puts the options of rage, right­eous indig­na­tion or dis­gust-tem­pered amuse­ment in the Hobson’s Choice cat­e­go­ry for podi­um positions.

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