Olympic Hugs
The nation is in shock – Poland is out of the running for a Men's Volleyball medal. Nobody expected this. All across the country, fans wearing Polish volleyball shirts are wandering aimlessly into roads and falling down stairs, their eyes blank expressions of disbelief.
I watched, along with the rest of the nation, as the biało-czerwoni were badly thrashed by the biało-czerwono-niebieskich. With my foreign eyes unobscured by tears, I think see what the problem was – too much hugging. These guys seemed to have their arms wrapped around each other every 30 seconds. If I hadn't known it was a volleyball match, I might have thought I was watching Men's Indoor Hugging.
It seems to take up a lot of time and energy, but I'm not sure what all this macho embracing is supposed to achieve. Are volleyball players particularly emotionally fragile? Do they need constant human contact to stop them from having psychological breakdowns? Perhaps they just need to be reminded which team they are on every half a minute. I can think of less time-consuming solutions – perhaps they could just wink at each other warmly after every point, or give a little wave.
The worst thing about team hugging is that none of the team members seem enthusiastic about the idea. It looks like something they've been told to do rather than something they feel they want to do, and they do it with as little passion as they tie their shoelaces. There's no eye contact. Nobody adds a little pat on the back or pinch on the bum. These are Polish men after all, not Italians, who take to man-on-man physical affection more naturally.
So it may be a bit fake and very perfunctory, but does it do any harm? Look at the results. All of Poland's medals so far have been in sports where hugging would be difficult or outright dangerous. There was, for example, nobody there to embrace Tomasz Majewski after he had tossed a cannonball halfway across London. Nobody threw their arms around Bartłomiej Bonk as he lifted the equivalent of small bus above his head. Neither of these men look like the kind of people who would respond well to an uninvited male embrace.
Other Polish successes have also been notably free of hugs. Sylwia Bogacka won a silver medal in the Women's 10 m air rifle, and everybody knows it's a very bad idea to hug a woman carrying a gun unless you are very sure she wants to be hugged. Only the Men's sailboard event would truly have been enhanced by hugging – anybody who can embrace anybody else while standing on a surfboard in 50kph winds should automatically get gold.
Jamie Stokes
