I Can't Believe (Cough! Cough!) I Won Gold!

I don’t know how closely you follow international news, but you may have heard recently that China has come under scrutiny for having environmental standards that are, shall we say, less than habitable. Within the past year, China has been found to fill its food with cardboard, coat its toys in lead paint, and pump the ashes of dead Pandas into its atmosphere.

I don’t have a link for that last one, but I’m sure it’s true. NBC Nightly News has in fact featured a story on China’s poor air quality for 118 (give or take 3) consecutive days.

Fortunately, at no time in the near future will hundreds of countries around the world send their finest athletes to China for more than two weeks to compete in intense athletic competitions while eating that nation’s poisoned food, breathing its poisoned air and playing with its poisoned toys.

Wait a sec. What?

Oh, right. The Olympics. Is that this year?

Hmmmm.

Well I’m sure everything will be fine.

But what kind of advantage does this pose for the Chinese athletes? It’s been widely reported that many American athletes are training here in the U.S. and waiting to arrive in China until after the Olympics are over. Meanwhile, the Chinese athletes have been not only training, but living in this chimney-like atmosphere for decades. Surely they’ve become accustomed to it, thereby building up a necessary tolerance, right? So when it comes time to run the 10,000 meter distance race, the rest of the world’s track stars will feel like they’re camping on the ledge of an erupting volcano, while the Chinese athletes will merely feel like they’ve been smoking a pack of menthol cigarettes.

And don’t forget, the Chinese have always been adventurous eaters (which is why they're always walking into the Veterinary Clinic without taking any animals in with them). They’re used to egg rolls, General Tso and that crappy soft-serve yogurt that is somehow simultaneously runny and full of ice crystals.

Then again, maybe years of exposure to this type of environment will catch up to all of them as they’re pushing their bodies to extreme limits. Maybe in the middle of a relay, the Chinese athletes will double over like they’ve just seen John Daly play a round of shirtless golf.

Who knows? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But we might want to send Daly over there just in case.