The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [125]
The day after NikeInsider′s post appeared, Nike issued a forceful denial of the rumors in a statement they emailed to the American Foreign Press.
“The posting is a malicious rumor, and has not only misled netizens, but also seriously damages the company’s reputation,” the statement read. “We have immediately asked relevant government departments to investigate those that started the rumor.”
By then, though, there was little Nike could do except go into damage control.
EVIDENCE AGAINST A CONSPIRACY
If seeing is believing, and a picture tells a thousand words, then the video of the event is the strongest argument against this conspiracy. Watching replays of Liu’s time on the track, it’s nearly impossible to imagine that he was faking the injury. Actually, it was quite the contrary. Liu looked like an athlete bravely trying to fight through the pain, acutely aware of the significance of the moment. While he may be a smooth corporate pitchman able to sell a Cadillac or a pair of sneakers, he is not an actor. In fact, he had been discouraged from acting in movies after his triumph in Athens. And I certainly didn’t see a faker on the track that day. Neither did NBC′s Tom Hammond, who covered the event for American television, nor the CCTV anchorwoman who, overcome by the emotion of the moment, needed a moment to compose herself.
It’s also unlikely that an athlete like Liu, who had reached the pinnacle of his sport, would be willing to throw away four years of intense training for an opportunity to, as the reports said, save face, or worse, earn a payday. While it’s true that Liu stood to gain a lot more money in future endorsement opportunities by winning a second gold medal, he had a lot more to lose if he was discovered to be deceiving the world. As a symbol of the virtue of the Chinese athlete, he had more to live up to than his record on the track.
If Feng is to be believed, and Liu truly possessed great psychological powers, then it’s doubtful that Liu would be psyched out by Robles’ success on the track. If anything, Robles’ success would motivate Liu to train harder, strive more, and rise to the challenge Robles presented. That determination is in the nature of champion athletes, and it’s integral to their success. Champion athletes don’t fold when the going gets tough, which is what makes them champions in the first place.
The rumors of Liu’s involvement with the Chinese mafia have never been substantiated.
MY OPINION
At the risk of sounding like a xenophobe, I’ll concede that it’s difficult to put anything past the Chinese government. I say this because of all the reports out of Beijing by western journalists covering the Games that spoke of the repression of information and the control the communist regime exerted over the games. I say this because it was proven that they had a pretty little nine-year-old girl lip synch her performance during the opening ceremonies while the real singer, who was deemed to be less physically attractive, sang off camera. I say this because they demand that their athletes sacrifice half of their earnings to government and sports authorities within China, and because they knowingly allowed an underage female gymnast to compete on their gold medal-winning team in Beijing.
It is no secret that the Chinese government looks after its own interests first, but even so, I can’t believe they instructed their national sporting hero to fake an injury to spare the country the shame and disappointment of losing.
If anything, I believe they urged Liu to compete despite his injury, that they asked him to bite the bullet, run through the pain, and risk his long-term health for the honor of his country. A late attempt to rehab the injury and get him ready to compete would explain why Liu trained in seclusion, missed the opening ceremonies, and didn’t appear in the Olympic Village until two days before he was scheduled to run. It also explains why there was no official