Words, Cavan Gallagher 

Ah, the Olympics: we love ‘em, right? The spectacle, the excitement, the stirring poignancy of people all over the world coming together as guests of a foreign culture, so we can all marvel at the glory of our species’ ability to achieve. Then there’s the way the host city always endures a persistent shower of flash-fried bird chunks for six solid weeks after the closing ceremony. The event to end all events, where we can all indulge in the brotherhood and drama that is mankind at its very greatest.

You know, when you put it like that it almost doesn’t seem like an immense pile of old pants.

Essentially, the Olympics is that ‘special’ time that comes round every four years, where we indulge in rampant nationalistic competitiveness over a bunch of sports 99 per cent of us never really cared about during the previous 3.9 years. But the sports aren’t the real problem. It’s the hype that rankles: the incessantly irritating deluge of rhetoric from the media that not only persuades us that other countries honestly care whether we get a bauble of a slightly higher-valued colour than them, but why we should believe this whole ludicrous shebang to be the apex of all our lives...whether we’re into sport or not.

Well, that’s the British view. Aussies, however, really do care about the gongs. Witness the incessant press speculation as to whether their tally would outweigh the UK’s. Forget that ‘oh-so-foxy’ Stephanie Rice defeated all who stood in her way in the swimming pool; what they worried about was whether they’d stuff the Poms. Which, funnily enough, they didn’t. Even then though, miserable and dejected at the Old Country’s triumph, they couldn’t take it on the chin, accusing us of only winning in the ‘sitting down’ sports. What. Ever.

Strange, though, that they were more obsessed by numbers than the fact that Stephanie took home the ‘Babe of Beijing’ title as well as her medal haul, because this time around, the spin seemed to be on glamour. Coverage of the Beijing Games was more about how good-looking everyone involved is/was/needed to be, and most normal people will have come out remembering only two things:

Yang Peiyi, the poor little girl with the voice of an angel who was axed from the opening ceremony for looking like a little girl, and The SHOCKING revelation that the lovely Stephanie has sex with people.

Regarding point a), it needs to be said that the Chinese may not be the only ones who are a little too appearance-driven. A scan through the selected athletes’ profiles rapidly begins to feel like a trawl through a models’ agency database. They’re a uniformly stunning-looking bunch, with barely a soul among them owning a face you could imagine seeing on the street, unless that street was crammed full of plastic surgery clinics. When even the boxers look like they should be modelling designer underwear, it all starts to get a tad Stepford Wives.

So with this in mind, we at Whingeing Pom have undertaken it as our duty to swim against the media grain and pick out those scant examples of quirkiness, aesthetic weirdness and unbridled bloody ugliness that have stood out at the Glamour Games like proud, unbending islands of character and individuality in a mollifying sea of blandness. And, because goofing off on weird-looking buggers is far more fun than Michael bloody Phelps and the alleged adventures of his genitals.

Liu Qui, China (Boss)

Ugliness isn’t just about looks. Attitudes can be ugly, intentions can be ugly, and sometimes decisions can be uglier than Mick Jagger snogging a belt sander. If you’re looking for someone to blame for the axeing of poor little Peiyi, Mr. Liu, as President of the Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, is the prime candidate. When even the Musical Director of the Opening Ceremony is saying the swap was a dumb idea, you know you’ve dropped a clanger that could deafen King Kong, and, when you’re also member of the Chinese Politburo, that’s saying something. Besides, anyone who not only willingly allows the crushing of a little girl’s dreams on a global stage but so blatantly ignores the fact that he’s far too old to be wearing enough product in his hair that his head looks laminated, deserves all the scorn he can get. At least Peiyi didn’t have a wipe-clean fringe.

Xu Haiyan, China(Wrestling)

Now if they were looking for a Chinese Olympic female that mirrors truly fear, the wrestling squad should’ve been their first stop. Haiyan makes the grade by a) looking like Jet Li and b) having hair reminiscent of that well-hammered look toothbrushes get when they need retiring.

Bakhtiyar Akhmedov, Russia (Wrestling)

A face only a mother could love, a haircut only an elderly mother could inflict. If you ever wondered how Noel Gallagher would’ve turned out had he been dropped on his head one or two extra times as a baby, look no further (but to be fair, even Bakhtivar knows every Oasis album since 1995 has been rubbish, so you could say he’s technically ahead of the mop-topped Mope Machine). Anyone looking for evidence of Bakhtivar’s possible motivations for dedicating his life to physical strength is advised to look to the lower half of this picture.

I know. I’m sorry.

Liam Phillips, GB (BMX)

Speaking of bad hair, let us take a moment to thank Liam for his timely - and  greasy - reminder of why Jet really need to be taken out onto the street and shot. Liam truly stands apart from his peers, eschewing steely eyes and chiselled features for an expression like he skipped his paper round. And why not? BMX riding is a harsh, unforgiving sport, solely because every single gold medal since 1982 has been won by Eliot from ET. You simply can’t compete when the other guy’s trainer is a stumpy, levitating alien. Thankfully, Liam is confident of finally getting his medal in 2012, when he switches to the marbles squad.

Irina Nekrassova,Kazakhstan(Weightlifting)

“Now, young  Skywalker...You, like your father, are now... miiiiiiine...”

Disney Rodriguez, Cuba (Wrestling)

Two things stand out about this wrestler’s name. First, its sheer irony given that he shares it with an entertainment empire that is synonymous with the country Cuba has had such a touchy relationship with in recent decades; and second, because the guy has ears like Dumbo. Given that he’s in a sport where one expressly avoids giving their opponent anything to hold onto, this could be seen as a bit of a disadvantage.

 Michaela Breeze, GB (Weightlifting)

Under the bottom end of that barbell is the last person to inform Michaela that Kirk Douglas wants his chin back. You think we’re telling her? She could break us with her nostril fuzz.

Robert Dolega, Poland (Weightlifting)

Being an Olympic athlete is a tough gig. Aside from the never-ending, body-crushing training, you also have to live a life of unrelenting sacrifice. Sometimes, you have to tell your family you can’t be with them for a few months, sometimes, you have to miss births, weddings, and all the other moments pivotal to one’s emotional life and sometimes, you simply have to tell the other lads in the UK Subs that you just can’t do that tour of the Midlands right now.

Wei Sheng, China (Nutter)

Because no matter how hard you train, how fast you run or how much you lift, nothing makes you cool like a head full of pins. Multicoloured pins. Multicoloured crucifix pins. At long last, we can finally have that day-glo Christian-centred remake of Hellraiser.

Stephanie Rice, Australia (Swimming, Apparently)

Let’s finish as we began, on a philosophical note. Sure, she’s attractive – but as the Chinese Olympic Committee so ably demonstrated, Ugly isn’t just a physical thing. What’s ugly about Steph as a media figure, is the basic fact that we would never have had her rammed down our throats like we have (insert your own Michael Phelps joke here) if she looked like Herman Munster. Or, for that matter, any of the other athletes listed in this article. Professional sports was once one of the last refuges where the hopelessly ugly could become superhuman; now, it seems, it’s just become another field where having an airbrush and someone high-profile to shag matters more to how you’re remembered than what you actually do.  Somewhere, Peter Beardsley is crying. Or drooling, it’s hard to tell. With a face like that, it’s sometimes difficult to know which hole does what. But the point was, that never was the point.

Have we so quickly forgotten Public Enemy’s warning that hype is not a thing to be believed?  Can we not remember the pain Chuck D suffered by not smiling once between 1988 and 2003, just so we may learn this lesson? Alas, their teachings have been discarded like so many newspaper inserts trying to explain just what the hell goes on in the triathlon. We demand that a formal apology be sent to Flava Flav forthwith: that big clock necklace thing was heavy, you know.

For shame, Australia, for shame.