Is Aly Raisman Jewish and other Olympics questions
U.S. gymnast Alexandra Raisman performs during the artistic gymnastics women's floor exercise final at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Tuesday Aug. 7, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) Credit: AP
It’s bad form, I know. I’m not supposed to wonder if she’s Jewish; I’m not supposed to consult Wikipedia. But thanks to Raisman’s choice of "Hava Nagila" to accompany her floor exercises, I no longer feel guilty about this. Mazel Tov, Aly!
And now, some other burning questions:
Why do the Russian team jackets say “Russia” and the Chinese jackets, “China”? Neither country uses the Latin alphabet. The Russians use Cyrillic (their jackets should say “??????”) and the Chinese use Chinese characters: Go ??!! (Even when the games were played in Beijing, "China" was spelled out in Latin letters.)
Whatever happened to the good old 10-point system? OK, I know it was replaced in 2006 by the International Gymnastics Federation in an effort to make the judging fairer and more flexible. Now it’s open-ended, reflecting the difficulty of the routine and how successful the gymnast was at executing the difficulty. Fair and flexible, perhaps, but utterly lacking in drama.
Will the Olympics gymnastics competition ever end? First they compete to see who competes for the team. Then the team competes, then the individuals compete for all-around medals, then the individuals compete for individual medals.
NBC tells me that this is it. I hope they’re right.
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