Fresh from two weeks of OD-ing on the Olympic Games that I once again wasn’t going to watch, I may have come full circle on their legitimacy. Decades ago, I was a young reporter so interested in the Olympics that I paid my way and took my vacation to cover (as in “work”) my first Games. Today, I wonder if I’ve turned into a cynic who — in this Distant Replay — thinks the oft-and-rightly maligned former President of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, may have been onto something when he decried the professionalism and politicization of Olympic sport.
The Olympics is now all about money, isn’t it? That’s why the IOC declared the Games in Beijing must go on, despite a world-wide pandemic that has killed — and continues to kill — millions of people. That’s why the IOC awarded the Games to China despite its sad human rights record. That’s why, in 1986, the IOC split the Winter and Summer Games into two-year cycles to generate more TV income.
Brundage, an egotistical “emperor” of all things Olympic who died a multi-millionaire, declared until his last days: “There are only two kinds of competitors. Those free and independent individuals who are interested in sports for sport’s sake, and those in sports for financial reasons. Olympic glory is for amateur.”
The Olympics was always supposed to be about the athletes. It still is, the highlight of their competitive careers and in many cases a generous source of their incomes. Yet they are often used as pawns, shoved onto a public stage to attack or endorse the host country, and thrust into a spotlight where they are expected to win at all costs to justify the sponsorship money they receive.
A major-league ballplayer once said: “It’s very easy to lose and very hard to win.” That’s sports. Winners and losers, but the price Olympics “losers” pay is often excessive. A 16-year-old swimmer in 1968, Elaine Tanner, was vilified for losing the backstroke final by a fingernail and wound up living on the street. This year, Canadian curler Rachel Homan is in a deep depression because her final draw was a millimetre short. Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was left twisting in public controversy because of an illegal substance she was given, presumably to assure that she won…does anybody really think it was a 15-year-old who made that decision, our even knew what substance to take?
Given that everything has a life, perhaps it’s over for the Olympics as they are. The athletes would miss the kind of camaraderie that curler Jennifer Jones embraced as part of Canada’s team, yet it’s a camaraderie accompanied by codes of silence and isolation in villages guarded by iron fences and armed guards. Maybe it’s time to award Olympic medals every fourth year at each sport’s world championships, in honour of the Games.
The Olympic Games were born in Greece. The cause of death, whenever that might be, seems destined to be “greed.”
