BEIJING — Let the Games, and the battle for freedom-loving hearts, begin.
In the hands of a skinny 23-year-old American runner named Lopez Lomong, the U.S. flag will be transformed into a symbol of hope and a formidable weapon against oppression at today’s opening ceremony of the Olympics in China.
“Maybe a Chinese kid out there will learn from my story,” Lomong said, “and maybe take it and run with it.”
When Lomong carries the Stars and Stripes while proudly leading his American teammates into the Bird’s Nest, it will send emotional tremors throughout the world.
His long, proud march promises to elicit tears of joy from war-bloodied people in Africa and smack the totalitarian Chinese government in the face with the realization you can erect a security fence around the Olympics, but not keep out the free flow of ideas.
Without saying a word, Lomong will make the most powerful statement by an American competitor at the Olympics in 40 years, since Tommie Smith and John Carlos defiantly raised black-gloved fists in support of the U.S. civil rights movement.
Lomong, a native of Sudan, fell in love with America by paying the only money he had in his pocket to watch from Africa on a black-and-white TV, as Michael Johnson ran at the 2000 Games.
A refugee on the run since childhood, Lomong was a fortunate survivor of a bloody war enabled by the Chinese that resulted in the genocide of at least 200,000 of his countrymen.
“I’m using running to get the word out about how horrible things were back in Sudan,” said Lomong, who became a U.S. citizen in 2006. “People are running out of Darfur, and I am putting myself in their shoes.”
For everybody itching for the Olympics to be about more than sports, Lomong will score a major victory for the American dream no matter where he finishes in the 1,500 meters later in the Games.
Haven’t the Olympics been without a villain long enough?
Here comes China.
You mean to tell us the Chinese pollute the skies, throw political dissidents in jail and lie about the ages of their female gymnasts?
Perfect.
Now there’s an Olympic rival who grates on all the red, white and true-blue beliefs we hold dear.
Americans come to the Summer Games for one purpose. “Dominance of the world,” said U.S. basketball star Lisa Leslie.
But what fun is being No. 1 if there’s no angry face of a hated rival for Americans to wag our index fingers at? A billion Chinese now care deeply about the Games.
“I clearly expect (the Chinese) to be the dominant team in the Olympic Games for many years to come,” said Steve Roush, the U.S. team’s chief of sports performance.
Rivalries are the lifeblood of sports. Quite frankly, what has been missing from the Olympics is somebody big and bad enough to challenge Team USA in the final medal count.
This showdown promises to be made-for-TV melodramatic because the most-heated competition figures to be waged by pixies. There will be a war on the gymnastics floor. And the U.S. team is already hinting the Chinese might have cheated by having two competitors who fail to meet the minimum Olympic age requirement of 16.
At the 2007 world championships, an American squad led by Shawn Johnson edged the Chinese, but in a sport where the winner is determined by a judge rather than a stopwatch, can the Americans possibly get a fair shake on China’s home turf?
The Olympics have long mixed sports and politics. Remember when the Russians robbed us of a gold medal in basketball? And wasn’t the Miracle on Ice where the end of the Cold War really began?
“I wish there could be a rivalry like we used to have with the Soviet Union,” said Bela Karolyi, the coach who taught American gymnasts how to be world-beaters. “To beat the Soviets, to beat the Big Bear, was so exciting, because everybody said: ‘Grr, we’re going to kill them!’ It was gorgeous. Obviously, nobody killed anybody. But it was great competition.”
For any aging baby boomer who ducked and covered during air-raid drills in elementary school, there might never be another sports rival capable of making us chant “U-S-A!” as loudly as communist Russia did.
Count on China, however, to put the heat back in the Olympic flame.
From the moment Lomong carries the U.S. flag into the opening ceremony, it will be the return of Olympic passion that turns national pride into a battle of our way versus their way.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
