SYDNEY – Nowadays, the only way to see the Olympic ideal is to close your eyes.
Because to have them open is to recognize the worst of ourselves at an athletic festival designed to showcase our best.
We get cover-ups and preening athletes who should be covered up. We get jingoism, racism and threats of terrorism. Drugs not only stain the dirty, but raise doubts about the clean. Suspicion, corruption and evasion are now the Olympic motto, usurping swifter, higher, stronger.
If we have strayed this far from the grandest concepts, is it not worthwhile to ask why we are still having the Olympics. Is it time to shut down the Games?
The original Olympics began around 776 B.C. with slaves and women not only unable to compete, but threatened with death if they even attended the Games. Over the next few centuries, the lust to win became such that Greek cities employed professionals and bribed officials (sound familiar?). In 66 A.D., Nero won a chariot race in which he was the lone competitor, drunk and did not finish. The emperor Theodosius eventually ended the nonsense, abolishing the Games in 393 A.D.
The Olympics would not be revived until 1896, once more with hopes for the greatest ideals. Now we must wonder if a modern Theodosius is needed to shut down the Nero-esque absurdities and abuses spawned under the watch of IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch. He stays in kingly accommodations and requests he be referred to as His Excellency while the Olympics burn.
Each host city longs to hear Samaranch use the Closing Ceremonies to declare its Games “the best ever” as he did yesterday for Sydney. Why would anyone want this guy’s seal of approval? It is like waiting to hear you are a good husband from Bill Clinton. Samaranch spent one chunk of his adult life working for fascist dictator Francisco Franco of Spain and another as the front man for one of the most corrupt organizations in the world, the IOC.
The president of the Australian Olympic Committee, John Coates, has acknowledged bribes paid to Kenyan and Ugandan officials to land these Games. The upcoming 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake were built on bribes to the IOC, including – a recent report said – that Viagra was purchased for men with votes. Who will fix this? Samaranch convened a committee to investigate, but it was soon learned he had accepted gifts from two cities that would eventually land the Games.
This emperor has no clothes. At these Games, he lobbied to have two members of the extended Olympic family allowed into the country despite Australian authorities finding them criminally undesirable. This is nothing new. Samaranch once honored the cruel, former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and championed the IOC appointment of anti-apartheid activist Jean-Claude Ganga of the Republic of Congo, who was one of the central figures in the Salt Lake bribe scandal.
Samaranch is scheduled to step down in July 2001. Does anyone really believe in his line of succession? Do you like what it has wrought to date? The IOC defines smug with no signs in Sydney that the scandals that rocked its institution last winter has lessened its self-importance or self-indulgence. This organization rakes in nearly $1 billion a year, but according to the Los Angeles Times spends about three percent of that helping impoverished countries, which have trouble even feeding their athletes. Samaranch gets a luxury suite on the IOC dole wherever he stays.
The leadership cannot clean its own house, how is it supposed to clean the Games of drugs? So far, so bad. The testing was so inadequate a belief permeated the Olympics that every superb performance and every medal was chemically aided. What have the Games come to when the clean are as guilty as the cheaters in our minds? What does any endeavor have left when the feeling is the results are rigged to favor cheats?
American officials have talked critically for a long time. But then international officials – tired of the sanctimony – began leaking the extent of the U.S. doping problem and the lengths officials have gone to cover up. It embarrassed America. It also further hurt the Games by spreading suspicion over every athlete in red, white and blue.
Marion Jones might have married poorly and she certainly runs fast, and that combination cast distrust of her five-medal Games. At least, she publicly handled it all with dignity. What can we say about Maurice Greene and the rest of his 4×100 gold relay team? They acted like posing fools after their victory. They had every advantage the greatest nation can offer – from the best nutrition to coaching to facilities – but “look at me” is now a part of life.
And not just for Americans. Unfortunately, we import all of our culture. As an example, members of the Australian women’s basketball team trashed the refereeing and U.S. players after a gold-medal game they lost by 22. Graciousness and sportsmanship – two more traits you would desire at an Olympics – took a beating.
In the crowds, fans booed America the overdog yet cheered long jumper Jai Taurima, who said “dark” athletes would not win his event because of potentially cool weather. Aboriginal star runner Cathy Freeman was pushed forward as an example of improving relationships. Though visits to an Aboriginal slum or extended conversations with plenty of white Australians would reveal America has no monopoly on racism.
Overall, however, Sydney did as well as possible. For the most part, Sydney’s facilities, technology and transportation worked. The people were nice. But it is all said with this caveat, good in comparison to others, particularly Atlanta. With 11,000 athletes, 21,000 media, 500,000 outside visitors and a competition schedule that keeps growing with drivel such as trampoline and synchronized diving, no city can do great regardless of what Samaranch stamps the games.
For example, Sydney will be praised for a terror-free Games and, let us all be thankful. But that just might be fortune as much as anything. When this many people are moving, every bag cannot be checked Sometimes mine were, sometimes they weren’t. I must have gone through a metal detector more than 100 times. Each time, I put my cell phone face down in a plastic bin to be passed outside the detectors. Not once did a guard flip the phone to the face side or examine the contents of what was passed outside the detectors in anyway.
The Games will remain a large target forever for the bad guys.
And for what purpose? At one time, the Olympics brought us places and people that were exotic to us. But innovations such as CNN and the Internet bring the world to living rooms 24 hours a day, robbing the Olympics of mystique. There are annual tournaments to decide an acknowledged world champion in just about every sport, so the Games are not needed as a one-stop forum for that.
Sometimes all that seems left fueling the Olympics is NBC’s $3.5 billion deal through 2008, companies like Nike pushing their athletes such as Jones and Greene to pump sneaker sales and the IOC with its hand out. It is in our face.
Maybe we need to open our eyes and shut the Games.