Sports around the World

When watching TV in Australia, it’s easy to think you’re in the US.  But once you get lulled into that universal Americanism of the couch potato, you’re soon to be reminded that you’re in a strange and different place.  So OK, you can watch Letterman, the Simpsons, and Oprah.  You can watch the world news on the BBC, which is a little weird, but nothing you don’t find on PBS at home.  But if you try to watch sports, you’re bound to see something weird.

 

OK, I know what you’re thinking—Chris is going to blabber more about cricket.  Although that’s been a continued source of entertainment on this trip, I’ll let it lie for the time being.  In Australia, it’s a given that you’ll see cricket, rugby, soccer, and Australian football (a game one can easily mistake for rugby).  I’m also not surprised to see a lot more formula-1 racing—I know it’s much more popular outside of the US.  But I’m not talking about those obvious ones.  I’m talking about really weird stuff.  I’ve seen indoor men’s volleyball.  I’ve seen swimming.  I’ve seen track and field.  Americans don’t even pretend to care about these things on non-Olympic years.  But one race I saw takes the cake.  I see a pretty scrawny, weird-looking kid racing around a track with a pained expression on his face.  I’m thinking, why is he running so awkwardly?  The commentators made a remark about how he’s so far ahead he’s walking to the finish line.  I’m thinking, is he at the very end of a marathon?  Why else would someone run in such a bizarre fashion?  Then the camera panned out and I saw the rest of his body.  He was powerwalking.  Yes, I saw a televised international teenage powerwalking competition. 

 

Mind you, I am not watching the bizarre sports channels on a 1000-channel cable TV.  I have about 15 channels in this hotel.  This is not ESPN-8, “The Ocho,” or anything.  It’s just regular TV.

 

In Nepal, TV basically shows no sports except for cricket.  But I did enjoy reading the sports headlines in the newspaper every day.  In the US, outside of the Olympics, usually  sports headlines don’t deviate from baseball, football, and basketball.  (Though golf is also common.)  A hockey headline is a rare sight, and in the right season, you might get the occasional tennis or NASCAR headline.  But in Nepal, the non-cricket headlines could be about anything!  Formula-1 was in the news since Michael Schumacher is coming out of retirement.  (Never heard of him?  In the 90s, only a few athletes like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods made more money.)  In Nepal, I also saw headlines about judo, volleyball, cycling, tae-kwon-do, track, and wrestling (not WWE).  In an article about a martial arts championship going on in Thailand, the newspaper commented that all the Nepali competitors were out of medal competition except for in a certain class of judo, because only three countries had entered that particular field.  I thought that the most ridiculous headline I saw was about badminton—something like “Nepalese Shuttlers Flying High”—until I saw a newspaper headline about competitive rock climbing.  You can’t make this stuff up.

 

On a related note, during our 13-hour layover in the Delhi airport transit room, we sat for several hours next to the Afghani martial arts team returning from that Thailand competition.  I didn’t talk to them much, but an annoying hippie girl behind me did.  It was interesting listening to their conversations.  They were excited to meet an American, and talked mostly about cultural differences, like the fact that they don’t drink alcohol because they’re Muslims, and that it’s very difficult to get good jobs in Afghanistan and in America it’s pretty easy (relatively speaking).  They asked her what religion she was and she responded “Child of the Earth.”  Ugh.  Then they started talking about drugs, and she was amazed they were from Afghanistan and didn’t know what opium was.  Great ambassador for America, that one.