Women's futbol time!

You know I had to do a post on the olympics.

The 2008 Beijing Olympic has been in the news for a while now. From China's human rights record, to "controlling the weather" to which head-of-state is attending and not attending, to who's gonna break the "super powers" medal monopoly, its all been covered endlessly in the media and on blogs. Thats all cool and interesting stuff, but honestly theres really only one reason I have been looking forward to the Olympics. If you know me at all you probably guessed by now: WOMEN'S FUTBOL (aka soccer).

I spend all year following men play the beautiful game at every level. I tried to watch the Women's world cup as well, but theres little to no coverage available. However, in the context of the olympic's the women's tournament actually gets comparable coverage to the men's and as a result I get to spend the next month waking up at all odd hours to watch the games. yeyaaaa!

Now, just on principle I never support a US sports team in an international tournament. I don't like monopolies and it is impossible to separate national politics from sport tournaments. In fact I would argue that nationalism and sports are interminably linked. Which explains that at a time when US policies are pretty much universally hated, one of the highlights of the men's world cup was watching pretty much all non-US football fans (and some americans too) coming together to enjoy the US get its ass kicked, regardless of the state of the points table. That's pretty unique.

The US women's team though, is a force to be reckoned with. The women on that team are AMAZING athletes. However, I could never get caught up in the 1999 dream team hype and I don't own any poster's of Mia Hamm. Despite the amazing futbol that they play, their clean, clinical style and the mostly white sub-urban team just never got me waking up at 5 am to watch games. Enter Natasha Kai.

I could watch her play all day. And not just cause shes a hot queer-and-out woman of color. That definitely helps, but she is an AMAZING finisher. She knows how to get that ball in the back of the net in style. As all forwards in futbol know, tricks and getting past defenders are all great skills, but the hardest thing to do is finish and shes got the magic touch. Hear her talk about her historical debut goal for the US.

Did I mention she was queer?

p.s. in other news, the folks over at afterellen.com just declared that football is the gayest women's sport out there. word!