BANGKOK – As the London Olympic Games approach, Thais around the country are gearing up for the quadrennial practice of caring intensely about women’s weightlifting as a sporting event for a period of about six or seven days.
Already the pre-Olympic hype has begun, with televised interviews of the nation’s hopeful women athletes, whose existence has once again entered the minds of their countrymen.
“Our weight-lifting women are the pride of the kingdom,” said Sports Minister Weerasak Kowsurat. “At least from now until, say, mid-August.”
Thailand’s women’s weightlifting team brought home two gold medals from the Athens 2004 Games and one from Beijing in 2008, sparking a media-fueled frenzy in sports-mad Thailand. Extensive coverage of the women’s weightlifting events has become a ritual event, with touching stories about the women’s upcountry lives and emotional interviews with their families and friends providing easy, non-controversial filler for Thailand’s heavily censored news shows.
Names like Buttree Puedpong, Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon, Pawina Thongsuk, and Udomporn Polsak will be programmed into the short-term memories of Thailand’s population, as will a momentary feeling of empathy for the lives of working-class upcountry people among materialistic Bangkokians.
The awareness will reach a crescendo during the actual weightlifting events, during which much of the country will be gathered around their televisions, cheering wildly for the women who carry Thailand’s media hopes on their sturdy shoulders.
Should any of them triumph, the momentarily-celebrated athletes will become the temporary symbols of Thailand, uniting the country in a brief moment of celebration, during which they will be afforded the chance to say cliched and heartwarming things about the country and its people.
Best of all, medal winners will be rewarded with the signing of endorsement contracts for health-related mass-consumer products, thus making some money from their 15 minutes of fame before being relegated back to their un-aspirational lives of conventionally non-beautiful averageness.
Thais will also be temporarily aware of the sport of Taekwondo around the same time.
