{"id":1910,"date":"2008-05-12T11:54:59","date_gmt":"2008-05-12T15:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/?p=1910"},"modified":"2011-05-02T22:48:39","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T22:48:39","slug":"go-susie-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=1910","title":{"rendered":"Go Susie GO .."},"content":{"rendered":"

Beijing is calling!\u00a0 Susan Rapp, the former Olympic silver medalist<\/a>\u00a0in 1984 is now Susan von der Lippe, mother of 2, at age 42 is trying to qualify for her fourth Olympic! WOW !! You go girl!!\u00a0 Refreshing and romantic.<\/p>\n

A little sad note that she had to sit out in 1980\u00a0when she’s 15 (who’s to dispute that she won’t win a gold medal that year?), because US\u00a0decided to boycott the Moscow game.\u00a0 <\/span>Now there are thunders\u00a0about boycotting Beijing game, but\u00a0not a single nation is considering to withheld its athletes.\u00a0 Smart move.\u00a0 In consideration to the athletes: they only have so much youth and limited time span to shine, only every four years!\u00a0 And most Olympic sports aren’t money-generating venue, except, well the late comer like tennis and basketball – ice hockey players aren’t being paid as much as other major leaguers.\u00a0 They do deserve the moment in the lime light, pls don’t take that away.\u00a0 Carter wasn’t a smart president anyway.\u00a0 He got elected only because of Nixon, IMHO.\u00a0 And what did Carter administration achieve for withholding their\u00a0hard trained athletes?\u00a0 More gold medals to the Russians.\u00a0 A gold medal is a gold medal.<\/p>\n

Sport is sport, pls don’t let the politics erode its spirit.\u00a0 The hard training athletes inevitably speak different language, grow up in a different culture, but they can compete\u00a0together abide by the same rule of the game.\u00a0 That is a huge acomplishment, and it what the Olympic spirit is.\u00a0 They might not be able to communicate orally, but they speak to each other directly thought the love and understanding of the sport they compete.<\/p>\n

Just so this weekend I saw a little program showcasing a 12-year old Korean American violinist performing at Carnegie Hall.\u00a0 She is a short\u00a0cross eyed pre-teen at Juilliard.\u00a0 It was the\u00a0familiar Haydn piece\u00a0she\u00a0was playing drew me to the TV first – Steve<\/a> practiced it\u00a0often while I was living with them in Beijing.\u00a0 What made me stay to watch was\u00a0her enjoyment and composure,\u00a0so radiant that I would take her as Julia Fisher or Sophie-Mutter, virtuoso,\u00a0mature, has deep understanding and appreciation for music.\u00a0 Later, the presenter also invited her two chamber music mates, a 11-year old pianist, and a 13-year old cellist who’s been in the US for only six months.\u00a0 They all played without a sheet – all in their tiny heads!!!\u00a0 The presenter who first accompanied the Korean as the pianist, a 6-footer man joked to the tiny pianist that she perhaps doesn’t trust his page turning ability.<\/p>\n

Isn’t music like sport, it nurture and cultivate the players from the world over who speak different tongues and fashion different cultures?\u00a0 Why can we please leave the politics\u00a0out?\u00a0 Just\u00a0let them play and compete, and us to enjoy the beauty of the music\/game?\u00a0 And please don’t rerate the slow runners – each one has its own ability and circumstance, China is coming up and catching up.<\/p>\n

Oh, one more thought: can we exclude the professional players from the game?\u00a0 Olympic is to showcase the best, but does the professional needs this venue to twinkle every four year when they have ESPN year round?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beijing is calling!\u00a0 Susan Rapp, the former Olympic silver medalist\u00a0in 1984 is now Susan von der Lippe, mother of 2, at age 42 is trying to qualify for her fourth Olympic! WOW !! You go girl!!\u00a0 Refreshing and romantic. A little sad note that she had to sit out in 1980\u00a0when she’s 15 (who’s to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-1910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-swimming","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}