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I am pro-China.
It’s hard for me to say that above a whisper and without looking over my shoulder because it is very popular to hate China right now in the U.S.
I support human rights. I do not support genocide. Despite spending many summers in Berkeley, I am not a communist. Our environment’s health is important to me.
The Race Club is a swimming organization I founded that assembles elite swimmers from around the world to live and train together. When you have every race and religious belief living together as a team you gain outside perspective on many issues.
As a citizen of the United States I don’t like to be judged by our country’s foreign policy, administration, product consumption, social welfare, healthcare, or any other one issue, whether I support it or not. How short-sighted, I thought, for anyone to judge you or me on any one issue that you or I have very little at most to do with.
 The surge of anti-China sentiment usually revolves around one or two issues. My plea is that we stay focused with our disputes.
If you have an issue with the Chinese government and its handling of Tibet, don’t take it out on the Olympic Games or the athletes representing all the other countries in the world.
China is a great country full of great, proud, hard-working, hospitable people.
In Olympic sports, it is the pursuit of perfection that drives the athlete. Sports is about striving to be better, about getting closer to perfection. Just be better than everyone else and you win. You don’t need to be perfect.
In anything involving the human race, there isn’t going to be perfection. China is not perfect. Nor are the United States, any other nation or any given person.
When it comes to government, I am pro-democracy. Do I think our system is perfect? No. We are a long way off, and that is OK, as long as we are striving to be better.
Everyone has been talking for a long time about how these Olympic Games are supposed to be China’s coming out party. So many people have expected China to use these games as a platform to demonstrate its power. We expected propaganda, and some even expected the political fervor that surrounded the 1936 Berlin Games.
But if anyone is using the Olympic Games as a political platform, it has been the groups that oppose China’s policies. Because China is hosting the Games we all are much more aware of the flaws in Chinese policy on the environment, Tibet and Darfur.
It seems to be OK for those opposed to a given Chinese policy to politicize the Olympics. But woe to China if it uses the Games to promote some of the more positive things it is accomplishing.
Let’s back off China a little bit. So far China and the Chinese people have worked really hard to put on the best Olympic Games ever. They won’t be perfect, but these Olympic Games are shaping up to be better than any other.
And that is something worth cheering for.
-- Gary Hall Jr.
Photo: Ribbon dancers give an enthusiastic performance at the Tiananmen Gate on Wednesday as they await the arrival of Yao Ming and the Olympic torch relay. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times
Inspired by Diabetes is a global campaign that encourages people touched by diabetes to share their stories with others around the world. The program is a collaboration between Eli Lilly and Co. and the International Diabetes Federation’s Unite for Diabetes initiative. In the U.S., the American Diabetes Assn. is the program’s national advocate. For more information, visit inspiredbydiabetes.com
The first thing you learn from table tennis players is that you do NOT call it ping-pong. It is table tennis.
My interest in table tennis started when I left high school. My parents celebrated by purchasing a ping-pong table. (Do you call it a table tennis table?) Anyway, my two younger brothers quickly became experts. When I returned from college on holidays I was soundly humiliated at the hand-held paddle of my younger siblings.
My interest continued to develop. My skills never did.
 Fast forward to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, my first. A friend went on and on after watching the table tennis. “It was incredible!” he raved, “The most amazing thing I have EVER seen!”
The Olympic scheduler always has table tennis competing at the same time as swimming. While I was focused on winning a bunch of swimming medals I was missing out on the most incredible, amazing thing. You might think I’m joking, but my mind would always create ways to sneak in to see the table tennis in between the prelims and semi-finals and finals that my swimming required.
Alas, my commitment to swimming never allowed me to stray from the pool.
“It was unbelievable, as I recall,” was all my brothers offered after attending the medal rounds of table tennis at the Sydney 2000 Games. They both both nodded and smiled.
It was especially hard in Athens. The U.S. swim team stayed in the same building as the table tennis team. I was in a room right over one of the U.S. table tennis stars! We would depart in the morning, heading in different directions, and I would long to get on the other bus heading to the table tennis venue.
We were waiting for our buses one morning, and I boasted that I was aware, well aware, that the sport is NEVER referred to as ping-pong. It’s table tennis. They nodded in agreement. Then took a step back.
In Beijing I will get to watch, live and in-person, that most incredible, amazing, unbelievable thing called Olympic table tennis.
I’m really looking forward to it!
It was a year after the 2004 Athens Olympics, and I was sitting in my friend’s apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan. It was a beautiful day. My friend, who had just purchased a new set of table tennis paddles, said “I’m going to call my friend, and when he gets here, we’ll go down to the park and play some ping-, uh, sorry, table tennis.”
His friend is a somewhat famous writer for Rolling Stone. He showed up, we had a beer and talked some small talk. Then, as we were leaving, I asked him, “So, are you any good at table tennis?”
He turned to me, looked me square in the eyes, and with a straight face said “Table tennis is the one thing in life I do really, really well.”
I had just met him, so I didn’t know if he was joking or not. It turns out he wasn’t.
For years I kept thinking about what he had said. Wouldn’t it be great if all of us knew the one thing in life that we were really, really great at?
-- Gary Hall Jr.
Photo: George Braithwaite of the United States volleys with China's Laing Geliang during a table tennis match on June 12 at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda -- 37 years after the two men participated in a week of table tennis exhibition games in China. Credit: Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times
Inspired by Diabetes is a global campaign that encourages people touched by diabetes to share their stories with others around the world. The program is a collaboration between Eli Lilly and Co. and the International Diabetes Federation’s (IDF) Unite for Diabetes initiative. In the U.S., the American Diabetes Assn. is the program’s national advocate. For more information, visit inspiredbydiabetes.com.
Clean athletes have a responsibility to not remain silent when it comes to doping in sports.
It was announced on Friday that the International Olympic Committee had stripped the gold medal from the 2000 U.S. men's 1,600-meter relay team. Antonio Pettigrew had admitted using performance-enhancing drugs before, during and after the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Pettigrew never failed a drug test.
 Michael Johnson, a legend in the sport of track and field, will lose his gold medal along with other clean members of the relay.
Good.
That may sound callous. Allow me to explain why this is the best move that the IOC could have made. It comes down to a word or two. For starters, a word that sport is supposed to instill in participants. A word that participants should know is more than just a word.
Accountability.
Accountability is taking responsibility for your own actions. In sports, when you are a member of a team, accountability is something more. Athletes need to be accountable to their teammates. It isn’t an anti-doping agency that holds an athlete accountable. Athletes can fool the anti-doping agency. Pettigrew is another on a very long list that proves that duping the anti-doping folks is easy enough.
I have to wonder if he duped all of his teammates and coaches. Forgive me for thinking that someone knew, and kept silent. It’s just that I have been part of a team for a long time. You get to know your teammates, better than you’d like to most of the time.
Commitment is another word that takes on deeper meaning in sport. Commitment to the team is important. Commitment to clean sport is more important.
In this decision the IOC has done more to collar the cheats in sport than any anti-doping agency could hope to achieve. They sent a message to all clean athletes that doping will not be tolerated, and the people with the most to lose are the clean athletes, not the cheaters.
Cheaters only risk the truth being known. Clean athletes will have their dream ripped away from them for simply standing alongside a guilty teammate.
That’s cruel. Is it cruel enough for clean athletes to stand up and take action against dopers, teammate or not?
Let’s hope so.
It’s my hope that this action by the IOC is the catalyst that clean athletes need to turn on teammates or coaches who are haunting sports' darker corners. There isn’t any reward for outing cheats in sports, but until now there hasn’t been much consequence for remaining silent. For the most part, clean athletes have remained silent. Those that have come forward to out dirty athletes have, for the most part, been a shady clubhouse trainer/drug dealer sort, scandalized coaches, other dirty athletes, or criminals.
Unfortunately it usually comes down to a “he said, she said” situation with these types. Teammates, on the other hand, are in a position to gather evidence.
Teammates and coaches can put pressure on the dopers in a way that the anti-doping agency never will be able to. What a cheater might be able to conceal from the anti-doping agency, despite its best efforts, will be much more difficult to keep from coaches and teammates. As long as the clean athlete remains silent the cheaters only have to worry about an under-funded, under-effective anti doping agency.
Relay members Jerome Young and twins Calvin and Alvin Harrison all have failed drug tests at various points in their career.
My heart goes out to those clean members of the 1,600-meter relay team. Michael Johnson and Angelo Taylor, who lost their Olympic gold medals. But they haven’t lost their self-respect, or the respect of any decent American.
Respect. That’s a word Antonio Pettigrew and every other cheater should learn.
It’s worth more than any medal.
-- Gary Hall Jr.
Photo: Runners (from the left) Antonio Pettigrew, twin brothers Calvin and Alvin Harrison and Michael Johnson celebrate with their Olympic gold medals after winning the 1,600-meter relay at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images
Inspired by Diabetes is a global campaign that encourages people touched by diabetes to share their stories with others around the world. The program is a collaboration between Eli Lilly and Co. and the International Diabetes Federation’s (IDF) Unite for Diabetes initiative. In the U.S., the American Diabetes Assn. is the program’s national advocate. For more information, visit inspiredbydiabetes.com.
BEIJING -- USA Swimming should be ashamed of itself.
And the U.S. Olympic Committee doesn't look good on this one, either.
The swimming federation decided to hide behind bureaucracy rather than give Tara Kirk a chance at the Olympics.
Sure, somebody might have sued if USA Swimming had not followed Olympic selection guidelines set in February, when it assumed (in swimming's holier-than-thou way) it wouldn't have to deal with a situation like the Jessica Hardy doping case.
But the procedures still allowed for giving Kirk a place she missed by 1/100th of a second with a third-place finish during the Olympic trials. USA Swimming decided that no additional team members would be added if a place became vacant after July 21. (The full text is below).
But the federation's leaders knew on July 21 that Hardy, who won the 100-meter breaststroke at the Olympic trials, had a positive doping test. (Why it took them that long to get results from trials that ended July 6 is another issue.)
At that time, they could have added Kirk as an alternate. Other federations, like USA Gymnastics, routinely do it to provide replacements in case of injury.
Rosters did not need to be submitted to the International Olympic Committee until July 23. On Friday, Hardy agreed to drop her appeal of the suspension for use of the banned substance clenbuterol, meaning she had taken herself off the OIympic team.
Through her attorney, Howard Jacobs, Hardy admitted the testing was accurate, denied ever taking the drug intentionally and said she would now try to find out how it got into her system (a tainted supplement seems a likely source).
Which leaves Kirk without the chance to compete, a chance that USA Swimming should have given her, or that the USOC should have forced USA Swimming to give her.
"The fault now lies on many shoulders and I fear that incompetence, laziness and deceit may have played a role,'' Kirk wrote on her wcsn.com blog. "That is much harder to take. Regardless of intent, mistakes were made and I am paying for them. People I trusted to do their jobs and to ensure the working order of the system we put in place for our sport failed me."
All these sports organizations talk about the Olympics being about the athletes.
Which makes their inaction in the Kirk case all the more inexcusable. Just like all that blather from swimmers (except Gary Hall Jr., bless him) about their sport being free of the doping that besets track and field.
-- Philip Hersh
The USA Swimming text follows: If, for any reason, an additional Team position or an additional event position shall become vacant after July 21, 2008, (entry deadline), no additional members shall be added to the Team. If USA Swimming is permitted to fill a vacant event position, such vacant event position shall be filled with the swimmer already on the Team who has recorded the fastest time in such vacant event during the period beginning January 1, 2006 through July 6, 2008, provided, however, that the replacement swimmer must agree, after consulting with the Head Coach and National Team Head Coach and General Manager, to compete in the additional event. If the replacement swimmer does not agree to swim in the additional event, then the replacement swimmer shall not be considered an Available Swimmer for that event. This process shall repeat until the event is filled.
Photo: Tara Kirk after winning a March 26, 2007, breaststroke semifinal in Melbourne, Australia. Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images
 I remember saying to a reporter in Omaha a few weeks before the Olympic Trials were set to begin: “I feel like I’m walking the plank, that any second I’m going to fall.”
In life, a few of us manage to age gracefully, fade away, putting up the good fight that none of us can win. Father Time takes us all. For an Olympic athlete, there is no setting sun, no twilight of a long career.
At a certain age you make the Olympic team or you’re done. Eventually you aren’t going to make it. It’s a walk on a not-so-long plank of wood, followed by a fall and a final splash.
It’s so morbid.
At 33 years of age, I was far past being a veteran in the sport of swimming. I knew the end was coming. Frankly I was surprised that “the end” hadn’t come sooner.
It’s not the confidence one might expect from a guy who won the last three Olympic Trials, who is a two-time defending Olympic champion, the guy who occasionally wears a red, white, and blue cape with sequins.
My body had changed. I was older and I felt older. I had always been in the habit of listening to my body, and lately my body was telling me a lot more than it ever had before, especially in the morning.
Recovery time after training had become as important as the training itself.
I was still swimming fast. Very fast. It just hurt more. I knew that I was going to have a great swim at Olympic Trials. I had trained really hard, made so many sacrifices. The work was done. I was as prepared as I could be.
21.91 seconds.
My time at Olympic Trials in the 50-meter freestyle was fast enough to win any previous Olympic Games.
That’s something to be proud of, particularly at the advanced age of 33.
I placed fourth.
The top two swimmers qualify for the Olympics. My time of 21.91 seconds placed me 12th in the world for 2008, and I can expect to be bumped quite a few more slots by the time they extinguish the Olympic torch at the Closing Ceremony.
This sport of swimming has gotten a lot faster.
When Tom Jager, the world-record holder in the 50 meters freestyle for close to 10 years, retired from the sport in 1996, he bowed gracefully saying, “It is better to try and fail, than fail to try.”
That line stuck with me. It’s probably the reason why I was still in the pool at the 2008 trials racing against younger and faster swimmers. We won’t know what we’re capable of until we try, all the while knowing that one day, we’ll dig deep and it won’t be enough, or it won’t be there at all.
It takes courage to try, to lay it all on the line. If you’re able to do that, well, that too is something to be proud of. I am able to say that I tried. I really gave it everything I had, and I came up short. There is no shame in that.
Even though I didn’t make the team, I’m going to Beijing. I will be writing and reporting on the events and atmosphere, the good and the bad, the triumph and tragedy that come with every Olympics. I’m looking forward to it. I’m going to have a great time.
In the interview with that reporter, I told her that I was happy, really happy. Olympic Trials have come and gone and I didn’t make the team. I’m still really happy. Life is what you make it. I have a new chapter to look forward to.
I walked the plank, and, after making a bit of a splash, I’ve found that the water’s not too bad after all.
-- Gary Hall Jr.
Inspired by Diabetes is a global campaign that encourages people touched by diabetes to share their stories with others around the world. The program is a collaboration between Eli Lilly and Co. and the International Diabetes Federation’s (IDF) Unite for Diabetes initiative. In the U.S., the American Diabetes Assn. is the program’s national advocate. For more information, visit inspiredbydiabetes.com
Ticket To Beijing's newest blogger was on the phone the other day. We had just started a conference call to discuss story angles and plans for our upcoming Beijing Games coverage.
"Welcome to the L.A. Times," I told him.
"I'm the king of the world," Gary Hall Jr. responded with a laugh.
So, with much pleasure, here's an introduction to our newest blogger in Beijing.
Gary Hall Jr. will be providing commentary on the races from the perspective of a three-time Olympian. He can take you behind the scenes in and around the Games.
I first met Gary in 1996 at a pre-Olympic meet hosted by the Phoenix Swim Club and wondered if his slacker reputation was a bit one-dimensional. It truly was.
Since then, he's gone from rebellion to marriage and fatherhood and managed to win swimming's marquee Olympic event, the 50-meter freestyle, at the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Games.
The first Olympic victory wasn't long after he was diagnosed with Type I diabetes. Hall has made it his mission to serve as a role model for those with diabetes. He wants to educate the public and prove that a diabetes diagnosis does not mean the end of an athletic career.
We had lunch last winter in Irvine when he was taking time away from his training to do some work for BD Medical, including a motivational appearance at the Children's Hospital of Orange County, where he met with 50 or so diabetic children.
He told me stories about giving out his cellphone number to newly diagnosed people, and also calling someone recently diagnosed with diabetes. Many times, the youngster on the other end doesn't believe it's Hall on the line.
A couple of us met up again with Hall in June in Omaha. Again he spoke about his efforts. And when someone asked whether he was going to go into politics, he said that he leaned "slightly left."
"The extent of my politics today is stem cell research, and so I’ll put forth efforts to allocate more funding for diabetes research and stem cell research," Hall said. "Those are the political issues I’ve been involved in for a very long time."
He did get off a good line about presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, who was closely tied to Hall's grandfather -- former S&L executive Charles Keating Jr.
"I remember his comb-over most vividly when I was a kid," Hall said. "It was like this huge sea fan attached to the side of his head when he’d go underwater. We always kind of laughed about that."
Just a slice of the Hall humor. We've often joked that Gary has been a headline-making machine, and hopefully he'll be making (and writing) a few for us.
-- Lisa Dillman
Photo: Gary Hall celebrates after winning the gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle at the 2004 Athens Games. Credit: Mark Baker/Associated Press Photo
Note: Each of Hall's columns will carry a logo for Inspired by Diabetes, a global campaign that encourages people touched by diabetes to share their stories with others around the world. The program is a collaboration between Eli Lilly and Co.mpany and the International Diabetes Federation’s (IDF) Unite for Diabetes initiative. In the U.S., the American Diabetes Assn. is the program’s national advocate. For more information, visit inspiredbydiabetes.com
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