Paris Olympics 2024: That’s A Rap!

Monday is about movies, sometimes TV. Belatedly, here is my best sports-reporting, (w)rapping up the Olympics…

Well, that’s a wrap, or should I say, rap — The Paris Olympics are over. Cue the stories about New Zealand’s triumphant effort, we punch above our weight. We did better than Canada. We came in 11th on the medal table, and won 10 golds, 20 medals in total; our greatest ever effort in terms of first-place gets. And how good that we did one better than Canada? It was the tournament’s first major scandal, in our local news anyway, that Canada was flying a drone over to spy on the football players. Lol.

I meant to watch the Olympics, but I just kinda forgot.

My folks were in town overnight right in the middle of it, so I watched a bit of track and field with them one night. Because boomers love to become instant experts and point out that athletes that have trained their whole lives for events mere mortals could barely even attempt, “probably should have thought about it a bit more before they turned up unprepared”, etc.

I meant to watch the opening ceremony, because I’m a get-up-early type, most tragically in the weekend. But the day before I spent all of Friday tree-planting like some hippie and promptly had the greatest sleep of my life, sleeping like an actual baby, minus the waking up in my own shit every two hours. (Just the once, since you’re asking…)

Anyway, I didn’t need to watch the Paris Olympics, good as they might have been, because I have Instagram in my pocket, and RNZ’s rolling news updates sitting right alongside that, and there is still some semblance of water-cooler conversation IRL, so I felt fairly caught up.

Weirdly, The Olympics is so often about the gold medals, but I think Paris will be best remembered for people that either came second, or last. They tended to steal the thunder of those on the top spot at the podium. And as the world’s most amateur sports-reporter, I am truly here for that.

So, to the pole-vaulter whose giant dick got in the way…and to think that it’s usually the dick not being able to get up and over the line that shames men in a whole other way entirely. This guy might have lost the event, but he possibly gained the most followers on Instagram of anyone ever, immediately after this, erm, giant letdown. And, also, he found a way to literally belittle all three of the medal winners. All the armchair experts at home thinking, I know why that person was able to get over the bar. And then a big lol of course. Because we’re all juvenile deep down, or even on the surface. And we need little laughs like this because our world is burning. 🔥

In less amusing, but equally sexually charged storylines, a veteran swim commentator got the boot, in a meltdown of logic that reminded me of when the old shock-jock Don Imus went all racial-slur on a basketball game he didn’t even need to be commenting on, let alone the stupidity of his actual remarks. Though, here, it was actually Bob Ballard’s job, as Eurosport commentator, to call the matches. It wasn’t quite his gig to try and make the joke that the women were slow to leave the match zone because you know what they’re like, always putting their makeup on and shit. Okay, that’s not a direct quote, but that’s the actual sentiment, and the full absurdity. He was roundly mocked and left unsupported by broadcast colleagues. There was immediate online rage of course. And he was fired from calling the Games. Which is good. He deserves that. What a cock.

It was also not funny at all how gender politics got in the way of women’s boxing. A sport which usually suffers being called barbaric — particularly as a slur against women even participating, and features a corrupt judging body in its own boxing match with the Olympic committee. Two women that won gold in the Olympics in their weight categories should have been judged extraordinary athletes and top contenders. Unfortunately they were judged for a lot more than just that. And it will go on for a lot longer. And it’s the classic rent-a-comment with everyone with a remote control weighing in. Suddenly experts. Entitled to their opinions! It really brings out the thugs. Ghastly to even hear about as second-hand news.

We got to have laughs at names on the screen that translated to simple, silly memes. Which is good, good fun, again, in a world that’s burning, and even in the relative safety of New Zealand where all we have to worry about for the most part is a Coalition Government that is the very extreme example of the type of know it all armchair OIympic observer suddenly all up with rules of everything, despite there being no long division to show the years of study and attempts required to know such facts and be able to judge such feats, suddenly sure they’d do things differently.

But really, and it’s not cool writing this sentence, the Olympics came down to guns. Weird then, that in these two instances I’m about to mention, the winner of both The Olympic Games and Guns In General, The United States of America, was nowhere to be seen.

Turkish Shooter, Jessie Mulligan, won silver at the Olympics. He did so without corrective lenses, or the baffling (earmuffs) or other protective devices that are usually required. He stood with his hand in his pocket and both eyes open and shot his way to silver. I believe someone (an amateur online sleuth, of course) did some “qualitative analysis” so show that the Turkish shooter actually got the highest points and was let down on teamwork or an average or something like that from actually winning gold. I can’t give you the full details on exactly how that worked, and I’m not even going to try. This is not that sort of reporting, I even spelled his name wrong above (adding an ‘i’ so as to not be sued by RNZ, funny really since adding the ‘I’ has been a big part of RNZ losing its own gold medal status, but anyway).

And of course the other ‘Gun’ story is b-girl Raygun, aka Rachael Gunn, Senior Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. By day, Rachael Gunn teaches the youth the ins and outs of comms and creative writing and media studies, by night, and on weekends, she is a breakdancer, having studied the cultural significance of breaking as an academic, and with a background in other dance, such as ballet.

But was she really an actual practitioner, or is she Chris Lilley’s creative partner? Was this an earnest attempt by a fish out of water (the name of her most significant ‘move’, btw) or is she Kath & Kim: The Next Generation?

I would be happy finding out this had all been some prank. But I’m just as happy knowing it’s not. That said, the intensity of meme-ing in her general direction in just over 24 hours is, well, intense. It is something. Whatever it is. Relentless. And hilarious. And obviously just a touch concerning too.

My other hope is the meta-prank aspect of this was for her to gather ‘research’ via the meme-ification of herself.

She is easily my new favourite TV Rachael though. Way better than Rachel Dolezal, but maybe with a similar sense of delusion. And like Friends’ Rachael, this one comes with a uniform. With Rachael Green it was the hair. But with Rachael The Raygun it is the cricketing outfit. Never has national pride translated so quickly to national shame. Couldn’t have happened to nicer neighbours.

And with that, the Paris 2024 Olympics are a rap!

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