Olympic dark horse: the Bay Area Republic?

[KamaAina]

Haters gonna hate...

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_21153118/bay-area-is-hotbed-olympic-athletes

When the Olympic flame comes to life Friday, 71 athletes with local ties will be wearing the red, white and blue. That's more than 13 percent of the U.S. delegation, and it doesn't even include an additional 36 athletes with Bay Area ties who will be competing for other countries.

The Bay Area long has been an incubator of Olympic dreams. If we were a country -- say, the Bay Area Republic -- we would be a force.

Four years ago at the Beijing Olympics, Bay Area athletes accounted for 24 medals. That total would have tied us with Cuba for 12th among nations, ranking ahead of Canada, Spain and Brazil. Our seven gold medals equaled the number earned by France, a country of 65 million -- 58 million more than the Bay Area....

We've also been a figure skating center for the Winter Olympics thanks to the likes of champions Peggy Fleming and Kristi Yamaguchi.

Now all we need is a flag and an anthem. The flag could simply be that of California, with a slight change in wording:



As for anthems, we've got a million of 'em. We could use "We Built This City", just to mess with the rest of the world's heads , or go old-school with "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"... no, wait, I've got it! We can mess with people's heads AND not use the worst song of all time!

[jade3000]

1. Anything but "We Built This City"

That has to be the worst song of all time. As a kid, I got the album through BMG music club. Ooph. That was bad.

Go Bay Area! Interesting politics, cutting edge technology, strong colleges, and great athletes. Not bad.

Now if the Bay could just invest a little bit of money into the public school system ...