I realized that my Torino 2006 page didn’t have the final medal count, or any clips from the opening or closing ceremonies. They have been added.

I have also updated Vancouver Olympics 2010 Skating and Figure Skating at the Vancouver Olympics to reflect the fact that Evgeni Plushenko, former gold medal winner in Torino, was training for 2010. I previously had only included information on American Skaters.

If you have found your way to my blog through Squidoo, you might have noticed that I’ve been writing a lot about the Olympics lately. I enjoy watching the Olympics, and I realized that there is a lot that can be written about the subject. So in a way, I’ve gone from being a spectator to one who writes and comments on the games as well. Most of the time, the topic doesn’t really fit in with the theme of this blog, so I don’t write about it much here.

However, tomorrow is the big Olympics announcement, on who will get the games in 2016. There are four cities competing for the nomination: Chicago, Madrid, Rio, and Tokyo. Although much ado has been brought up about Barack Obama headed to the games to lobby for the United States, the heads of state of the other three countries are in Copenhagen as well.

Glenn Beck has been vocal about how he doesn’t want the Olympics to come to Chicago, and he has a point. Valerie Jarrett, one of Barack Obama’s closest advisors, stands a chance of making a killing by selling her slum properties and having them developed into the Olympic village. Chicago is a city of corruption in general, and they’re bleeding red ink. The United States is not in a position to pony up billions of dollars for a sporting event either.

I am somewhat ambivalent about the Chicago 2016 bid. I’d love to go to an Olympic games someday, and it’d probably be easier to get to Chicago than Rio, Madrid, or Tokyo (although if my husband graduates from law school in 2013, either one might be possible). On the other hand, I’m not sure if Chicago is the best place to hold them. If Chicago doesn’t get the bid, Denver will probably try to apply for the 2018 winter Olympics. There are six United States cities that are looking into bidding for the Olympic games in 2020, and two United States cities are already considering a 2022 bid for the winter games.

So I guess you could say that I’d be happy with whoever gets the 2016 games. Chicago would be easier to get to, but I’m not so hot about the whole corruption thing. The announcement is less than 12 hours away, so I guess we’ll find out then.

If you are interested, Universal Sports is broadcasting the IOC decision live on the internet.

But I’ve been pausing to watch some of the Olympics commercials. I really like the Johnson and Johnson’s commercials, where the athletes thank their moms for taking them to the pool to practice, or athletes play with Johnson and Johnson’s bubble bath in the tub after they work out, but there’s one commercial campaign that I just don’t get. Visa’s “Go World” campaign.

I do like some of the commercials. It was cool seeing Kerri Strug make her vault with one good ankle again, and I’m not even sure if I remember the Olympics where the runner falls and his dad helps him finish the race, but it was cool seeing that moment again too. It’s just the whole “Go World” nonsense that bothers me.

I’m an American. I root for the United States first. And if the US isn’t competing, I’ll root for someone else. Sometimes I’ll root for Australia, because I just love their country so much and if I ever had to leave the US, that’s probably where I’d be headed. I rooted for the guy from Togo who got the first medal ever for his country in white river kayaking. I never even knew there was a country of Togo until he was competing… at first I thought they were talking about Tonga (I used to go to school with someone related to the king of Tonga). I’ll root for the amputee swimming in the open water swim…

But Go World?

I think that it’s only natural to want a little friendly competition. I want the US to win. No, I don’t want plantar’s warts to grow on the feet of the Chinese, or for anybody to get hurt, or even for the Americans to cheat to win. I want everybody to do their best, but I’ve been cheering loudest when my country wins.

Competition, when you compete without cheating, is good for us. It helps people become better. All those kids entering their senior year trying to get all A’s competing for valedictorian… it’s good for them. They study harder because they want to win. The kids spending hours upon hours studying for the spelling bee… they learn to spell better because they are competing. The Olympic athletes… they are healthier because they practice hard because they are competing. We watch them and are inspired by their efforts.

Not all countries are created equal. I’m sure that the athletes are very nice people, but Iran has a terrible dictator for a leader. Same with North Korea. I’m not rooting for them to lead the medal count. Go USA!

Tasha Danvers, a hurdler for the British track and field team, was the sixth-fastest hurdler in the world right before the Athens games in 2004. Then she found out that she was pregnant.

The track and field world encouraged her to have an abortion, but she chose to give up the hopes of competing in Athens in order to keep her baby. In the Olympian world, 4 years is a long time. You usually only get a couple tries at most, so she was perhaps giving up her only chance. Her baby boy, Jaden, was born in December of that year.

But Mark 8:36 came to her mind… What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul? Athletes train very hard to win medals, so winning was all the world to her. But she chose to have her baby instead.

While it’s happy that she kept the baby, the story has an even happier ending. In Beijing, she won the bronze in the 400 meter hurdles. So now she has the baby, and a medal.

If you were good enough, people would be talking about your flips and feats for years to come, like they do with Mary Lou Retton and Janet Evans. You come to watch the Olympics 20 years later and the cameras zoom in on you in the stands to show how you still root for your country.

But as well known as some of these people are today, their accomplishments will one day be lost in the fog of time. The names will be written down in the record books, but they won’t be remembered any more than my great-great grandmother is… there are census and other records around to say some of the things that she did as well.

To prove my point, can you name the winner of the 100m and 200m sprint events in the 1928 Summer Olympics? Can you even name where they were held? You could look them up (Percy Williams of Canada won the medals and they were held in Amsterdam), but it probably isn’t at the top of your memory. Can you name even one athlete from the Ancient Greek Olympics? You can look up some of these athletes, but out of the thousands of athletes that competed, only a relative handful are still known to us today. Even though we know some of their names, we know even less of the records they held.

There’s nothing wrong with being in shape, or even being an Olympic athlete. But it would be foolish to think that achieving gold medals is a way to be remembered forever.

But there are some things that we can do to insure our that our deeds will live throughout the ages. Everything that we do for God will last forever. While a record-setting swim will only last until the next person comes along to break it, sharing the love of Jesus with others is eternal.

China is the largest country on the Earth, but they are also a very lost country. The Chinese government has allowed one sort of Christian church, but they have to be registered, and the government still goes after the underground Christian Church. The state version of the Christian church must have some problems, otherwise, why would the Chinese people risk their lives to meet in underground churches when they could go to a registered church?

I’m happy for the Chinese people. One fifth of the world’s population can be happy for their country, for the wonderful opening ceremony they put together, for their men’s gymnastics team winning the gold, etc. That’s a lot of happy people… but at the same time, I’m concerned for these people.

According to Wikipedia, nobody knows how many Christians are in China. Estimates range from 1% of the population to 10% of the population. Even with the most liberal estimates, that’s a lot of people that don’t see Jesus as their Lord. That’s a lot of people destined for hell.

Without God, winning gold in the Olympics, watching their countrymen win medals, and feeling the pride of hosting the first ever Olympics in the most populous country on Earth, could be as good as it gets. So while I’m happy for their happiness, I’m sad that these people’s joy will be short lived without God.

He managed to get himself out of the rubble, and then went back and freed two of his classmates. When asked why he went back to help his friends, he said something like “I’m one of the class leaders. I’m the hall monitor. It’s my duty to help!”

While he is very cute and courageous, we could learn a little from this boy. Many of us are always trying to make excuses as to why we can’t help. Not everyone of course, but there are too many stories about how someone was hurt and nobody came to their aid, expecting that someone else will, or that it’s too dangerous, or someone might sue us.

If we ever get into a situation where someone needs our help and we have the ability to assist, we should think of this little 9-year old boy. He was probably scared. It might have been dangerous. But he helped anyway. After all, it was his duty as a hall monitor .

I’m really not trying to turn this into “The China Blog” but there are just too many stories coming out of there right now. Most Christians and Bible teachers that I know believe that China is going to have its place in the world stage during the tribulation – the prophetic era of time described in the book of Revelation. So with all this activity going on in China… it does make things interesting.

The Bible speaks of a 200 million man army coming out of the East. Most likely it would involve China. So some stories are just more interesting when it comes out of China, because it has significance in more than one way.

At any rate, the Chinese have kicked out some of their missionaries. It hasn’t been too safe being a Christian in China at any time in recent years… at least in my lifetime. I have met some missionaries in China, I wonder if they are still there. Hmmm, I’ll have to see if I can find out.

A book that I recommend to everyone about Christians in China is The Heavenly Man by brother Yun. Brother Yun does not live in China any more, he works with the Chinese and their Back To Jerusalem movement, which strives to reach the world with the Gospel message in places that most western nations are afraid to go… like most Arabian countries where Islam is standard and converting a Moslem to Christianity can get you the death sentence. I believe what he wrote in his book, and if you don’t think that New Testament style miracles can happen today, you have to read this book. It’s amazing. One of the conclusions that I came to while reading this book is that we in the western world don’t often see New Testament style miracles because we don’t need them. God already provides most of us with food, a roof over our heads, and relative safety. For those in China that don’t have much of that, he provides through more miracles. Go read it.

The Chinese Christians need all the prayer that they can get. The Church there is still growing, despite (or perhaps because of) all the persecution.

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