Published: August 17, 2008 09:23 pm         

Let’s cheer on the USA and also cheer on the Iraqis

This Side of the Fence column

As a diehard Olympic Games aficionado super-fan, I harbor with great pride my more than normal bleary eyes produced from being glued to my girlfriend’s television set while cheering on our United States men and women who are competing for Beijing gold on the planet’s biggest stage. Go USA, is what I say and don’t forget to cheer on the Iraqis.

Cheer on the Iraqis? Has Giggenbach been dipping potato chips in lead paint again? Has he lost his last marble? Fear not, oh faithful reader, it will all make sense in a few paragraphs, hopefully.

Do the names Mark Phelps or Nastia Liukin ring a bell? How about Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian, who has my vote for the world’s poorest sport? Did you see that running man/suspended-in-the-air-guy from the opening ceremonies? I wonder if he’s available to perform at my pre-plunge ceremonies at next year’s polar bear plunge? That would be great.

If you’re sick of the Olympics, feel free to catch up on the antics of Beetle Bailey a few pages down. Perhaps Beetle will beat up the Sarge this week for a change.

OK, I admit it, my eyes welled up more than a tad when U.S. gymnast Anastasia Liukin accepted her “all around” gold medal as her father and coach, who won gymnastics gold for Russia in 1988, stood just steps away. And it was hard to fight back those same emotions when Nastia phoned her mother, a former Russian gymnastics world champion, and told her the good news. Apparently, her mother gets too nervous watching her daughter compete. Now that’s a story line. Need more? The Russian couple moved to the U.S. when Nastia was 2 years old after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

But the most compelling story line thus far out of China has to be swimming phenom Mark Phelps. The Baltimore, Md., man swam into the history books as one of the world’s greatest all-time athletes by winning eight gold medals. It’s hard not to be filled with pride when an athlete representing your country brings home more gold medals than any other human being in Olympic history.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian, who has been stripped of his bronze medal. Upon receiving his medal, Abrahamian dropped it on the podium and walked away before the gold medal winner’s national anthem was played. The Olympic International Committee picked up the medal and didn’t give it back to Abrahamian, citing poor sportsmanship.

Abrahamian was apparently upset over a ruling which he felt cost him a shot at the gold medal and he let the world know exactly how he felt about it. This guy needs a good public relations firm. I wonder how he’s going to explain that temper tantrum to his grandchildren years from now.

“Granpa Ara? Where is your bronze medal you won at the 2008 Olympics? I want to be a wrestler when I grow up and seeing your bronze medal could potentially inspire me to be an Olympic champion, which in turn could inspire thousands of young wrestlers across our nation,” an acute grandchild might say.

“The cheaters took it away from me. Go lift some weights.”

Up until a few days before the Olympics began, Iraqi athletes had been banned by the IOC from competing in Beijing because of too much political interference from the Iraqi government. The issue was resolved and a few Iraqi athletes are now at the games.

I tried for an hour to research exactly which ones, but got varying results. The official Olympics Web site said the Iraqis only brought a pair of rowers to the Olympics, but several news agencies wrote about a female sprinter and a discus thrower.

Nonetheless, if you see an Iraqi athlete competing against anyone except the United States, go ahead and do yourself a favor and cheer them on. It may feel funny, but give it a try. The United States has spent more than enough gold in Iraq and spilled more than enough of our soldiers’ blood for you not to.

Don’t forget that Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, once tortured and murdered Olympic athletes who failed at the games. Regardless of where you stand on the Iraq War, a medal of any sort could be priceless for a nation that has undergone such significant changes — both positive and negative — in the past six years.

— E-mail: cgiggenbach@register-herald.com