The 2008 Summer Olympiad is officially complete, so it is now time for those of us with opinions to look back on the event and find some deeper meaning to the otherwise trivial world of athletics. Thomas Friedman of the NY Times was one of the first to put it all together in his column for today. Friedman’s article is based on the assumptions that America’s olympic strength comes from our diverse “bottom-up” society built on immigration and class-action lawsuits. China’s strength comes from its uniform “top-down” society built on nationalism and authoritarianism. Apparently Friedman thinks both sides have plenty to learn from each other. That might be the case if all you are looking at is the 2008 Summer Olympics.

During the Olympics, you would commonly encounter the debate over which medal count counts. There seems to be a consensus outside of America that only Gold matters. Americans on the other hand believe that the overall medal count is what determines your national superiority. I propose that the only medal count that should really count is your country’s overall historical medal count since 1896.

According to the overall historical medal counts, America is in a commanding lead with 930 Gold Medals and 2238 overall medals. The next best performer is no longer a country, so they will have a hard time catching up. The Soviet Union has 395 Gold Medals and 1010 overall medals. China, who is so quick to gloat over their recent performance, still comes in behind France in both Gold Medal and overall medal counts. I am sorry, but any country that is outperformed by the French needs to be careful before they rush to any conclusions about their greatness. Final Conclusion: if athletics are the determining factor of national greatness, then the USA wins. Although Friedman’s article is interesting, I think China has a lot more to learn from the USA about how to make national greatness a long term trend rather than the result of short term national engineering. Otherwise, they might end up like Russia where half of their athletes get disqualified for doping and they have to go to war to distract the world from their dismal performance on the field.

However, when you put all macrocosmic analyses aside about how your olympic performance correlates with the overall sociopolitical/economic foundation of your country, there is one disturbing trend that I noticed during the Olympics that Americans might want to ponder: Genetic Engineering of Superhumans.

The first time I saw Yao Ming play basketball I concluded that he was the result of some Communist genetic experiment that had gone awry. After seeing other Chinese athletes in different contexts, I believe my initial assumptions that Chinese athletes are mostly genetically engineered organisms were probably correct. Although American media mostly focused on American athletes, the footage of the few Chinese in action that I did see raised some Red flags for me.

Test Case #1 – Wang Jie
She is the women’s beach volleyball player. She is like 8 feet tall, and 6 feet of her height is her torso. I don’t think any natural human DNA would produce a body of these proportions. She must have been crossed with a weiner dog.

Test Case #2 – Women’s Gymnastics Team
These girls might or might not be of the eligible age, but unfortunately we will never know. Assuming that the Chinese government is telling the truth about their age, then something else must be going on. It could be possible that the Chinese government has genetically engineered women that don’t go through puberty. This might be the result of some kind of population control initiative. Also, genetic experimentation is a productive alternative to abortion when it comes to all of those unwanted daughters. Fortunately for China these genetically modified female eunuchs turn out to be pretty good gymnasts.

Anyway, In a world where good old fashioned cheating through doping is getting harder and harder to get away with, genetic engineering will probably become the means by which nations produce super athletes. The race for a superbreed of genetically engineered athletes is a race we can’t afford to lose – even with a cushion of over 800 Gold Medals solidifying our lead towards national supremacy.