Rock the Tassle

I borrowed the title quote from Johnny Weir. Dangling from the upper left shoulder of his outift last night, a pink tassel. Is anyone surprised? Johnny skated well but made several landing errors. Others were better...Plushenko, the Russian dagger, the Kong of the ice rink, and Lysacek (Weir's US of A rival). Johnny is a long shot to medal, but it's the Olys and it's sports and strange things occur when it's the world stage. I'm a little bitched out by NBC's prime time schedule. Four hours of Olympic gorge. Every night. Really. Does anyone have the time to indulge? DVR's and Tivo's are burning hard drive well into the early morning. The women's snowboard cross, a grueling event, peppered with jumps that skies a 'boarder 100 feet into the air, had many stories but the two biggest were: Maelle Ricker a Canadian winning the gold at home, and Lindsey Jacobellis, forever linked to the 'hotdog' move which cost her the win at Turin, skidding off course in the semi-final. Underneath all this nationalism, and hoopla, I am always amazed and secretly pleased by the development and inclusion of women in more winter and summer sporting events as the decades slip by. It's not just about your mother's figure skating, downhill and slalom anymore. The NY Times today ran a story on title IX. Call it what you will, but the power of physicality can flip a lifetime switch on. Class room competition, as Alice said, feeds your head. Individual and team sports in the athletic arena provide a tangible link to discipline, reward, and the challenges of failure. The image of young Lindsey Jacobellis at Turin in 2006 biffing the last jump and then rising to take the silver; her tenacity in world competition to reach Canada only to lose again. At face value, what title IX provided was a means to an end... a shattering of tradition, yes, which leveled the playing field for every girl and insured, in the end, that there is a horse to climb back on.