Watch out for the Latvian cyclists

I was at the BMX cycling course today, which is quite breath-taking. It’s out at the Laoshan cluster of cycling venues in far western Beijing.

BMX cycling is the newest sport in the Olympics. Be prepared to see many new sports in the coming years as the International Olympic Committee tries to stay relevant with youth. I wouldn’t be surprised if surfing, skateboarding and inline skating end up as sports in the Summer Games.

Here’s a video/slideshow that we put together on BMX.

In any case, one of the things that surprised me when I asked some of the experts out there which teams were strong, almost to a T they said this: Latvia.

Why Latvia? I still can’t figure it out. One thing is clear, though. The Latvian riders are huge, as the photo attests, generally the size of football team middle linebackers.

I asked the Latvian team doctor, Aldis Cirulis, about why BMX was so popular there and he brushed off the question. But he was more voluble on why BMX cycling is likely to become a popular Olympic sport.

“It’s exciting. It’s a short event. It’s a lot of action. It’s dangerous. People like that,” he told me.

Comments

[A B]

Maybe they are from the BMX Corps for NATO?

[A B]

The Chinese People won the Beijing Olympics:

Gold Medal for Environmental Awareness and Improvement

A week before the Beijing Olympics opened, there is much fretting, fear and trepidation over how China have fallen short in the promises made to the IOC, whether the Olympics will come off as the spectacle that it is intended to be. The gap between promise and reality in air quality over Beijing is causing Chinese officials to panic and consider desperate measures.

But wait! Shouldn’t the standard of judgment really be whether the Chinese people won, and not whether the athletes or the People’s Government won? Let’s take the perspective of the Chinese people for a moment, and look at what real, enduring change the Olympics has brought to China --- at least in the area of environmental protection:

A New Era of Honesty, Integrity, and Openness between the People’s government and the Chinese people and the world have dawned. Nowhere is it more apparent than in the frank, brutally candid way in which officials responsible for air quality has addressed the problem. It was not so many years ago, when officials willfully and blatantly lied their way to covering up problems --- remember the SARS outbreak when local officials tried to cover it up? Or other infamous incidents like 1989? True, air quality is one of those things that is hard to hide the truth, but the government committed itself to a goal that have a clear, self-evident outcome. Not only everyone in Beijing, but through the ostensibly government controlled Chinese press, everyone in China and in fact, around the world saw how effective Beijing’s measures to clear the air can be and will be.

Forget the public “air quality monitors” readings put out by Beijing --- there will be hundreds, if not thousands of “private” air quality tests that will be run by different teams, athletes, etc. who will take their own measurements and make their own judgments. China’s government, and its people, has committed to deliver something for which only the truth mattered. No one can artificially create clear skies and sunlight. No official can lie their way to compliance with this goal set for the Olympics.

Whether Beijing’s efforts to clean the air will work is something that will be known to everyone. Beijing cannot stop these independent “verifiers” from testing, sampling, and, ultimately, spreading the truth before and during the games. There was no room to hide, no room for lies, and no denying what the cause and effect between polluting economic activity and environmental degradation.

The Beijing air quality team is basically, running the largest air quality improvement experiment ever worldwide --- an experiment so ambitious that no other country has even come close to actually implementing a similar test. The closest the world came to such a test is the immediate days after 9/11, when nearly all air traffic in the USA were grounded, and atmospheric scientists were able to obtain a reading of precisely how much pollution the US air transport system contributed to atmospheric pollution. By the end of the Games, Beijing, and China, will know more about what are the most salient causes of air pollution in and around Beijing than almost anyone else around the world --- and where to put their clean up RMBs for the most effect.

A more profound change is that the Chinese people will, for the first time, have a clear demonstration of their individual impact on the environment. The scale of the measures enacted to clear the air demonstrated to Chinese not only in Beijing, but in surrounding areas like Tianjin, how much they are a part of the problem. If the air do “clear”, even partially, in time for the Olympics, it will, show the Chinese people how what they do collectively, and individually, make a difference toward a goal that everyone wants --- a cleaner, less polluted environment. Perhaps it is too optimistic to think a one time demonstration is going to be enough to change one of Chinese culture’s most deeply held attitudes: the “Not my problem” problem.

Chinese, by nature, culture, and temperament, are prone to compartmentalize problems that are beyond their immediate and tangible control. Thus, a problem as abstract as environmental degradation, or resources depletion, traditionally has been viewed not just by the People’s government, but also by the majority of the Chinese people, as a problem that is beyond their control. This is not just the world’s problem, but it is also Beijing’s headache, as this fundamental Chinese character also limits the ability of any Chinese ruler, from Beijing to local authorities, to effect changes that are in the “common interest” --- like cleaner air. There are limits to state power when the people only obey so long as their government is focused on the issue, like during a crackdown, and then everyone go blithely back to “normal” and ignore the government’s edicts when the crackdown is over.

It is hard for foreigners to understand how pervasive this attitude is. When the Japanese invaded one province, in the absence of a strong central authority, the military commander of the next province treated the attack as “not their problem”. Take this attitude, apply it to every car or scooter owner, or apply it to everyone that has a small coal burning furnace, everyone “doing their own thing” in blithe disregard of the cumulative and collective consequences, and you have a handle on the problem of China’s rise and its consequences. It doesn’t matter what the official regulations are, everyone does what is “practical” and damn the consequences.

The new car owner does not connect their use of a private car with the severe air pollution problems in Chinese cities or with their own child’s respiratory problems. The small factory owner that dumps their toxic contaminated waste into the sewer does not associate it with health problems around them as they ingest the contaminated food and water. The coal burning power plant operators (which are mostly state owned) do not like to acknowledge their emissions contribution to poor air quality over cities, decreased agricultural yields (from less sunlight), or poisoning of the surrounding population with mercury emitted from their smoke stacks. If they don’t make these basic, and clear cause and effect inferences, what hope is there that they will link as abstract an issue as harm from greenhouse gases?

The Beijing Olympics forced everyone in China to think very hard about their individual contribution to the collective problem of environmental degradation. This alone, is a major victory --- even if it is only confined to Beijing and a few surrounding cities and for a short time. The important lesson that will live long after the Beijing Olympics is over is that improvement in the environment, like cleaner air, water, fewer contaminants in food, are not problems “beyond their control”, from the individual in the street, the small business owner, the large state enterprises, and government bodies all the way from local government up to Beijing. Rather than Chinese going abroad (to Japan, Singapore, Europe and the US) and returning marveling at how clean their environment is, the Chinese people, have experienced and tasted what is actually achievable in China by Chinese. True, what was achieved for the Olympics is a brief respite. But its effects are long lasting, for it has given environmental costs and “externalities” a face and a name to a people long regarded as “pragmatic” and blithely, willfully, ignorant of the environmental consequences of their individual actions. It will not destroy, but it seriously dented the “not my problem” attitude. Now that the people have tasted sunshine, and know environmental degradation is a controllable problem, building a national consensus to make cleaning up China will be much easier.

The Central Government in Beijing won big --- by showing the Chinese people that there is are legitimate reasons and benefits to voluntarily cooperate and obey what historically would be regarded as abstract, impractical, and excessively onerous edicts by the central government, they have strengthened the hand of the technocrats who realize the imperative of improving China’s environment is as important a goal as economic growth.

Before the Olympics, local officials would have ignored or lied their way to compliance with as abstract, impractical, and ridiculous goal as clean air over a city like Beijing. With the change in the evaluation method for local officials implemented by Hu and Wen to include improvements in the environment rather than just economic growth, and what you have is a watershed event in modern Chinese history – economic growth will have to be weighted against environmental costs. Unlike previous edicts, this time, truth, rather than what officials claim in their reports, matters. Truth that everyone can go out and monitor, test, and see for themselves. Truth that cannot be concealed or falsified by local officials in their reports to Beijing. Too many people are watching. Too many channels of legitimate protest against officials now exist.

A small step toward solving the problem of the “tragedy of the commons”, perhaps, but a major step that is unlikely to be reversed after the Beijing Olympics. The China that will emerge from the Olympics may be a slower growing China, but it will be a healthier one, and one where the power of officials will be at once, more circumscribed, but at the same time, more genuinely respected by those whom they govern. The idea of responsible, good government has taken a great stride forward --- all for the good of the Chinese people.

So, let’s give a big round of applause to the real winners of the Beijing Olympics: The Chinese people and their quest for a cleaner environment. They won the Gold medal that mattered.

[A B]

Just a note for those who regularly accuse Mr Johnson of being biased... here is a take on reporting on Georgia:

http://geimint.blogspot.com/2008/08/russia-georgia-disinformation.html

"However, misreporting and deliberate distortion of the facts by the worldwide media has led to a convoluted picture of the events that have taken place. The fact that so many of the most commonly reported news items can be disassembled piece by piece with a few minutes of research places doubts on the credibility and objectivity of these establishments."

[shenqh]

How come no report about the money laudry scandal in Taiwan? I know it is Olympic season, but it is a very important issue, as important as the Olympic games to China.

[A B]

@shengh

Oh... Americans don't want to talk about Chinese laundries anymore...

[pug_ster]

I doubt that this would make it as a permanent part of the Olympics. In one of the races that I have seen, 8 people started the race, only 5 people made it. The others will probably have sprained arms, or knees.