Nude Skin - Olympic physique mystique: physical perfection goes for the gold

Nude News: Olympic physique mystique: physical perfection goes for the gold

Posted on Saturday, August 21 @ 11:35:46 CDT

Like Aristotle before me, I am mesmerized by the sheer physical splendor of the athletes at these 2004 Olympic Games. KEYWORDS: 2004 Olympic Games physical perfection goes for the gold olympic athletes hard bodies Canadian beach volleyball Annie Martin Cat Osterman Ian Thorpe olympic swimming eye candy Athens Olympic Games Svetlana Khorkhina Catalina Ponor Michael Phelps Takashi Yamamoto U.S. gymnast Annia Hatch U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm

AUTHOR: Allison Cook

Let others obsess about the dramas of victory and defeat, the rah-rah thrills of U.S.A. boosterism, the arc of emotions spanning joy and despair. Like Aristotle before me, I am mesmerized by the sheer physical splendor of the athletes at these 2004 Olympic Games, by the jaw-dropping pageant of gorgeous young animals at play.

It is a nonstop spectacle of radical human beauty.

Canadian beach-volleyballer Annie Martin dives for a save, her Amazonian limbs stretched into a flying arc. Australian swim king Ian Thorpe slices into the blue, as sleek and ominous as some mutant otter. Texan softballer Cat Osterman, her horsetail whipping, convulses into the odd contortions of a blistering underhand pitch: This is eye candy of a startling and unconventional kind.

The physical perfection on display in Athens owes little to the studied, silicone-enhanced beauty peddled by Hollywood and our ubiquitous celebrity mags, their red-carpet processionals filled with preening young things who have been coiffed, made-up and costumed to within an inch of their lives.

Olympic beauty is made of sterner, more artless stuff. Even the glitter-strewn hair and careful eye makeup of the women gymnasts can't overshadow the greater allure of impossibly honed legs; whippetlike hips; feet that grip a balance beam with the nimble assurance of a Himalayan sherpa.

Sure, these gymnasts are cute, although I would pay good money never again to hear the term, "adorable pixies." And do all their manifold barrettes come from the same factory? But in motion, shooting straight up into fierce, gravity-defying tumbling runs, these young women offer powerful witness to what the human body can be, and can do.

Watching the brooding, fine-boned Svetlana Khorkhina swinging perilously from the uneven bars, or Catalina Ponor on the beam, it's hard not to contemplate our primate roots. Ponor's flow, her magnificent cheekbones -- everything recedes in the face of her primal sure-footedness.

Ogling the pared-down swimmers, male and female, we see there is an otherworldly quality to their finely sculpted bodies, an alienness enhanced by their shaven skulls and torsos; their inscrutable goggles and shrink-wrapped skullcaps. They seem just this side of human.

Aristotle found the ancient pentathletes most beautiful, their bodies suited for anything: the racecourse, the throwing field, the wrestling mat, the jumping pit.

I favor the gymnasts and the more specialized swimmers, those stars of the Olympics' first TV week.

Especially the swimmers. Aside from the fleeting underwater shots, and the dramatic head-on shots of a star in full-frontal butterfly, the moments in which I take aesthetic pleasure occur on the event periphery: the split-second dive from the starting blocks; the dripping clamber from the pool; the bobbing seconds in which the winners wait for the scoreboard, congratulate each other and catch their breath.

Thorpe's goggles come off, and suddenly you glimpse the angular, aquiline profile of a Renaissance prince who could pose before a landscape struggling to stay within the brand-new concept of perspective. If Thorpe were a piker, this resemblance would signify nothing. Because he is a master, it resonates.

Landlocked and warm-up clad, 19-year-old Michael Phelps looks like a gangly, jug-eared, lantern-jawed adolescent. In the pool, or just out of it, he morphs into something godlike.

With the skin-tight body suits and sinuous swimmer musculature comes the subtle erotic current that suffuses any visual appreciation of the Olympic Games. No shame there; the ancient Greeks, who got the physical-beauty thing big time, competed in the nude, and plastered the images all over their housewares.

But we're not talking prurience here. Well, maybe just a little bit, just enough for fun. Depending on one's gender or sexual orientation, breathes there a soul so dead that it has not wondered just how far Phelps' swim tights can travel down that oh-my-gosh, wasp-waisted torso? Or how much those bikinis can wedge up upon the well-chiseled butt cheeks of the female beach volleyballers?

That's the thing about Olympics-watching as an appreciation of the human form. There is something for everybody. Young folks can exclaim upon the hotness of the Japanese male gymnasts with their fabulously edgy haircuts and their propensity to gambol like exuberant puppies when they do well.

Older folks can savor the exploits of loose-limbed youngsters as a bittersweet remembrance of things past.

The visual pleasures never seem to stop.

The regal face of Takashi Yamamoto, the Japanese swimmer, streaming water droplets.

The gasp-inducing height of U.S. gymnast Annia Hatch's vaults. In motion and at rest, she is too beautiful for this Earth, and it has nothing to do with her sparkly eye-shadow.

The unexpected vibrance of the handsome men's volleyball teams in a U.S. vs. Netherlands match. Who knew manic spiking and blocking could be so cool, or that the American star player. Clayton Stanley, would turn out to look like Ben Affleck's more coordinated brother?

The spiky-haired Chinese table-tennis aces, Kong and Wang, in their flame-sprouting shirts and their vigilant, crouching stances. I was actually sorry when the Swedes, my ancestral countrymen, vanquished them.

The explosive movement quality of U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm's stylish pommel and high-bar routines. Such precision! Such big air!

And how wild are those laurel-leaf crowns, the new, must-have accessory?

There is a general Olympic watcher's rule that the fewer the clothes, or the tighter, the greater the viewing pleasure. That's just how it is. Baggy judo pajamas and outsize basketball uniforms do not contribute to a connoisseurship of bodily perfection. Who can even see a kayaker, or a fencer, behind all that padding and head-caging? Is that really radiant whitewater paddler Rebecca Giddens somewhere inside there?

Yet there are always fleeting moments when pure gloriousness sneaks out. Like the sabre-wielding American teen, Mariel Zagunis, whooshing her extravagant blonde ponytail out of her mask upon winning the gold -- and that face that could not stop smiling, a transport that turns everyday features into classics.

Which would you rather look at? Swimmer Amanda Beard posing coyly in a white bikini for FHM, the lad mag; or Olympian Amanda Beard, catsuit-clad, her pale eyes ablaze after having come from behind to win her breast-stroke lap? Sorry, no contest.

Now comes track and field, and the promise of beauty in other forms for the week to come. I don't know about you, but I can't look away.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Allison Cook writes for the Houston Chronicle.
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

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