In medal counts, 1 can be glorious

BEIJING – Since we’ve known for sometime it’s going to be a two-rickshaw race for medal supremacy in these Olympics, why not take a look at the other end of the list?
There they are, the one-medal nations. OK, it’s not Michael Phelps’ neighborhood.
But there’s one of the world’s strongest men – who is a member of parliament.
And one of the world’s strongest women – who now has 21 letters in her new name. A fortune teller’s bright idea.
Probably good that the athletes have tales to tell, if this is the only turn on the podium their countries are going to get.
Take India. Absolute proof that size doesn’t count, when it comes to population and Olympic medal total.
China, with 1.3 billion people, owned 76 medals through Tuesday.
India, with 1.1 billion, owned one.
That’d be Abhinav Bindra, who said after winning a gold medal in shooting, “For life, I’ve just been punching holes in a black piece of paper target.”
He is the only Indian gold medalist in history who doesn’t play field hockey. The guy’s one in a billion.
There’s also the former Chanpim Kantatian of Thailand. Unsettled by her weightlifting performances, she consulted a fortune teller last year, who told her the trouble was not in her body, but her name. Change it for better luck.
So let’s have a hand for Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon, not only winning a gold medal the other day at 53 kilograms, but also establishing herself as the top contender to be a word in next spring’s national spelling bee.
”I don’t know if you believe in fortune tellers,” she said in her press conference, “but she said that if I change my name I will win gold and go far. I believe in the fortune teller like you believe in God.”
There’s Viktors Scerbatihs, who when he isn’t doing heavy lifting for Latvia to get its only medal so far, is in the Latvia parliament.
A favorite in the top weight category, he took a bronze instead Tuesday and sounded like a politician on a lost election night. “Being a member of the parliament and a weightlifter at the same time is almost incompatible,” he mourned. “You can’t combine these two ways of living.”
So about his lifting career? “I’m not tired of sport, but tired of being unlucky.”
There’s Oussama Mellouli, who won the 1,500-meter freestyle for that swimming hotbed of Tunisia. But they do have pools where he attends school. USC.
There’s Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia, who won the silver in badminton but missed the first gold in his nation’s history, and the $300,000 his government had promised had he won.
There’s Anh Tuan Hoang, whose silver in weightlifting was the first medal ever by a man for Vietnam.
There’s Li Jia Wei, with her table tennis silver for Singapore’s first Olympic medal in 48 years. And Irving Jahir Saladino Aranda winning the long jump for Panama, which never had a gold medal before.
There was the 1,500 meter gold for Bahrain’s Rashid Ramzi. He used to be Moroccan, but the king of Bahrain honored him anyway.
There’s Paola Espinosa with her bronze medal in diving, and her coach from China.
And there’s Benjamin Boukpeti, who gave Togo a bronze in kayaking.
Except he’s from France.
But you know what they say. Once a Togolese, always a Togolese.