Finishing with Part 13 and  having bored you to death with too much information about the culture, etc. of the USA (#1) all of last week I will finally move towards a more detailed look at sports in the USA in more specifics.  Some of it will be more sociological rambling, all of it is background that I feel is relevant to this series.  And since it’s already out of control, I might as well go all the way and make it totally out of control.  I am an American and we have to do everything to the extreme.

Today I’m going to look at some general ideas about sports (both in universal terms and in America) along with some more great American sports hypocrisy.  Then I’ll finally look at the US and its sports dominance (such as it is) to lead into tomorrow and Wednesday’s discussions.  Before I can do that, however,  I need to make a quick return trip to the Land down Unda’ because this is funny as hell.

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Then He Gave Me a Vegemite Sandwich

Back in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 7 of this series, I talked about Australian swimming and, as part of my American genetic imperative to believe in dumb stereotypes about other countries, I wrote this “Having to outrun crocs swimming in open water is great sprint work (ok, that’s me being silly).”  Because Americans know that Australia is mostly crocodiles, kangaroos, koalas, the band Men at Work and little else.  And the soap operas are confusing because hot Asian chicks have Aussie accents and our brains can’t process this.  Well, mine can’t.

In any case, someone sent me the following link, about an Australian swimming coach who puts a crocodile in the pool with his swimmers to make them go faster.  Here’s the video.  I’m honestly not sure if I should be amused, terrified or just smug in knowing that all of my stereotypes about other countries are true or that my jokes can create reality.  I think I’ll be all three but perhaps some creative OL’ing coaches can figure out an application of this to their sport.  Maybe involving a gorilla or monster truck; that’d be very American.

Continue reading Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 13