Against the grain

It is popular to say the Olympics are a failure for [enter your reason here].  

I'm a hopeless romantic steeped in English lit and when I see the athletes and see the work and detail put into these games I hear Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses: 'to strive to seek to find and not to yield'.  Followed by the wild world of sports 'the thrill of success, the agony of defeat' and I'll watch nearly anything.  

Naomi Osaka has had an interesting couple of years.  She convinced the US Open to honor the Black Lives Matter movement amid a summer of death and protest.  Then she proceeded to beat Serena and win the tournament wearing a mask with the name of a different victim of police brutality each day.  The final match was marred by questionable umpire decisions the result of which is the crowd, although happy for her, booed the umpire in support of Serena after the match.  So she beat her idol amid a controversy that probably would not have changed things (she was a much better player that day) and accepted her trophy while the crowd was booing.  It sent her on a personal tail spin.

( Read more... )