First, why do women 100 m dash runners decorate themselves like drag queens?
Well, because they can.
Although the shortest sprint is one of the glamor events of the Olympics, it requires perhaps the least training of any event in the Summer Games. You either have the talent or you don’t, and training matters less in sprinting than anything else at the Olympics, as Usain Bolt pointed out in Michelob Light commercial:
The 100m dash requires the fewest hours of workout and practice per week of just about any sporting event. For example, when Carl Lewis matched Jesse Owens by winning four gold medals in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (100m, 200m, 4x100m relay, and long jump), he prepared by working out only eight hours per week.
The big divide is between 400 meters and 800 meters, between anaerobic speed and aerobic endurance.
So women sprinters notoriously have ample time on their hands for doing ridiculous things with their hair, fingernails, and jewelry.
Second, it’s nice that the home crowd in France has a major hero peaking at the right moment for the Paris Olympics in Léon Marchand, the swimmer who has won four individual gold medals (a number reached in a single Olympics only [I believe] by Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz). He has won golds in both the butterfly and breaststroke, two strokes that seem very different.
Watching the crowd sing the La Marseillaise as Marchand got his gold medal was fun. It reminded me that national anthems often fall on the left or right. La Marseillaise, written during the 1792 invasion of the French Republic by the royal houses of the Continent, is of course the most famous leftist national anthem with its bloodthirsty lyrics:
To arms, citizens,
Form your battalions,
Let's March, let's march!
So that an impure
blood waters our furrows!
Of course, most national anthems, whether originally right or left, are by contemporary standards extremely nationalist.
It’s not uncommon for countries to have an unofficial anthem to represent the other side, the way Britain’s official national anthem is God Save the King:
God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King!
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the King!O Lord our God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!
And Britain’s alternative nice anthem is William Blake’s “Jerusalem:”
And was Jerusalem builded here
among those dark Satanic Mills?
In the U.S., the alternative leftist anthem is no doubt Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” which was composed in 1940 in response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.”
This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me
Of course, these days, “This Land Is Your Land” seems pretty racist.
You often hear that "the U.S./French national anthem is about war!" Or, "why is the British anthem about the king, huh?" The leftists will never mention the absolute royal worship and racial pride outside the Occident.
Cambodia:
Heaven protects our King
And gives him happiness and glory
To reign over our souls and our destinies,
The one being, heir of the Sovereign builders,
Guiding the proud old Kingdom.
Temples are asleep in the forest,
Remembering the splendour of Moha Nokor.
Like a rock the Khmer race is eternal.
Let us trust in the fate of Kampuchea,
The empire which challenges the ages.
Songs rise up from the pagodas
To the glory of holy Buddhistic faith.
Let us be faithful to our ancestors' belief.
Thus heaven will lavish its bounty
On the ancient Khmer country, the Moha Nokor.
Thailand:
The flesh and blood of every Thai united,
This land of Thailand sacred to every Thai!
Their sway since days of yore persisted,
Love and unity heart of every Thai!
Though the Thais love peace, dauntlessly we fight,
Our freedom shan't be taken away.
We'll sacrifice ourselves with every might,
Long live Thailand's glory and victory, hooray!
Thailand earlier anthems:
1934-39:
Let us all sacrifice our lives
To maintain the rights to freedom the land of Siam
That the ancestors tried to fight until their death
Eliminate the enemies of Thailand to perish
...
All of us, we are of Thai blood
Don't allow anyone to oppress us
Protect rights and freedom
In disaster helped each other until the day of death
1932-34:
The Siamese land is renowned as the land of gold.
The Thais have conquered this beautiful land.
The Thai people have served it ever since the Ancient times.
United, we have defended it
In some eras, our foes have attacked us.
But the Thais sacrificed their lives to save their motherland.
With blood, we fought for our sovereignty
And hitherto we have kept Siam alive.
This Siamese land is the bulwark of the Thai race
Our blood runs through this nation's veins.
Independence is like a pagoda we honor
We will rise and stand as one.
To protect our motherland and sovereignty so dear.
There will be no mercy for those who dishonor it.
We shall massacre them until their last.
To glorify our great Siamese land, hurrah!
> So women sprinters notoriously have ample time on their hands for doing ridiculous things with their hair, fingernails, and jewelry
I mean, it isn't THAT time consuming. I think it's more that drag (the physics concept) is less of an issue at the shorter events. I don't think pole vaulters have such things, because the more accoutrements they have, the more likely they are to knock over the bar. As it stands a French pole vaulter knocked over the bar because his large penis got in the way. Yes, really.