THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608030025
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: 76 lines
Among my Memorable Olympic Moments, right up there with Carl Lewis' long jump and Kerri Strug's landing, will be the sight of an unknown runner from Niger methodically circling the Olympic Stadium track long after her competitors had finished.
More than two laps behind the pack in a qualifying heat in the women's 5,000-meter race, she ran with plodding determination, a solitary figure in red, seemingly oblivious to the 80,000 sets of eyes tracking her progress.
``Putt, putt, putt went Little Red,'' said my daughter, quoting from a modern version of The Tortoise and the Hare.
It was too late for Niger's Little Red to win the race. But seconds later, she registered what must have been an emotional victory. Section after section of the stadium crowd rose in a roaring ovation as she passed beneath them on her final lap.
Maybe it was a result of the fact that none our six sets of tickets during a long Olympic weekend was for a high-profile event - no gymnastics, no Dream Team, no decathlon - but I came away from Atlanta last week with a far stronger sense than I'd gotten from American television of the international flavor and import of the Olympic games. They're a grand gala with sport binding cultures in a way that transcends gold medals.
Millions of American viewers could be forgiven for thinking the games start and stop with headline events and star athletes, most of them from the U.S.A. But thousands of Olympic competitors never show up on the tube, and many winners aren't wearing red, white and blue.
For lots of the athletes, ``winning the gold'' means something more intangible than a medal. It's doing one's best. It's responding to the nuanced differences in form and strategy that develop when competitors practice the same game continents apart. It's merely showing up and finishing.
Stunning as it can be to watch Michael Johnson run or Shaq dunk, they're no match to me this year for a series of less heralded athletes and events that you probably had to be there to see.
Take badminton, an Asian-dominated game that in Olympic form bears little resemblence to the lackadaisical backyard fare we know. With the shuttlecock zipping along at speeds of 150-200 miles an hour, a mixed doubles match pitting Hong Kong against Thailand was a marvel of choreography and agility.
Or a team handball round between South Korea and Angola, during which rows of Korean spectators stole the show as they clicked bright yellow plastic noisemakers in rhythm to the commands of a flamboyant male cheerleader.
Or a women's basketball match between Brazil and China, in which the South Americans spun to an almost-Latin beat as they swirled past a more composed Chinese squad, resplendent with matching raven ponytails.
Or a water polo final between Croatia and Spain in which many in the crowd donned checkered hats and waved red and white banners in a good-natured attempt to cheer the Croatians to their first gold medal as a re-formed nation. No matter that they won silver, instead.
Even the tragedy of the 1996 Olympics, the crazed bombing that claimed two lives, looked different from an international perspective. The morning after, my children and I joined groups of foreign tourists in a room honoring Mahatma Gandhi at the Martin Luther King Center for Non-Violent Social Change.
The passionate lives and the assassins' bullets that linked King and Gandhi were reminders that violence is no respecter of person or time or place. I wished that morning I could have seen what was inside a file in a briefcase carried by King on his final journey to Memphis in 1968. Peeping out of the sheaf of papers in the display was the barely visible label, ``The Meaning of Hope.''
I glimpsed one possible answer two days later on a crowded MARTA train en route to Hartsfield International Airport. From somewhere in the midst of the jam-packed bodies, a small voice piped up: ``I'd like to sit down.''
The innocent, seemingly hopeless request prompted laughter and one man's comment: ``You could sit on a lap, but these days, a lot of parents would sue.''
Rejecting cynicism, a woman snapped back: ``And a lot of other parents would say `Thank you.'''
Moments later, as a few passengers exited at an interim station, the woman orchestrated a small miracle. Legs from around the globe moved aside to create what would have seemed impossible in the throng - a clear path from the child to an empty seat. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB