(First published in The Dominion Post, August 5.)
The Olympic Games haven’t
even started and I’m over them already.
It wasn’t always like this.
Historically, the Games have been the ultimate sporting contest, commanding
rapt worldwide interest.
I’m no sports fanatic, but
even for me there was a frisson of anticipation as the Games approached and a
feeling of being caught up in the contagious general excitement once they began.
Everybody watched and
everybody talked about it. It was the subject of water-cooler conversation
before we’d heard of water coolers.
Heck, I even recall getting
excited over the Fosbury Flop – the revolutionary new high-jump technique that
won the American Dick Fosbury a gold medal at Mexico in 1968.
But I sense that the public
no longer feel quite the same spirit of ownership and involvement. You could
say the Games have been stolen from us.
There are multiple reasons
for this. Drugs, for starters.
In the past, the pre-Olympics
media buzz was typically about who was going to win what. But for weeks now,
Games reportage has been focused on allegations of large-scale, state-backed
doping by Russia.
Drugs are nothing new in
sport. In the 1960s and 70s, people would look askance at suspiciously
masculine-looking female athletes from the Soviet Union and East Germany and
wonder how many male hormones they had ingested.
It was even suggested that
the unbeatable Soviet shot-putter and discus thrower Tamara Press was a
hermaphrodite. She and her equally suspect sister Irina retired before gender verification became mandatory.
There are echoes of the Cold
War in the allegations now being levelled at Russia. But drug use isn’t
confined to Russian athletes; it's rampant in international sport.
New Zealanders aren’t above dabbling in drugs either. Discus thrower Robin Tait and weightlifter Graham May
both admitted using steroids.
What makes it even more problematical these days is that laboratories
keep coming up with ever more sophisticated performance-enhancing drugs and
seem able to keep one step ahead of detection techniques.
So every time someone wins
gold, there’ll be that nagging suspicion: was it pure strength, skill and
determination that did it, or was there a Swiss lab technician in a
white coat lurking somewhere in the background?
Then there’s the influence of
corporate and state sponsorship, which tilts the field in favour of professional
competitors with wealthy backers.
The days when raw, naturally
talented amateur athletes like Peter Snell and Murray Halberg prepared for the Olympics
by pounding roads in the Waitakere Range at weekends under the critical gaze of
Arthur Lydiard (who owned a small shoe factory and earned money on the side as a milkman) are long gone.
If Snell were running now,
he’d be supported by a retinue of professional trainers, motivators and even PR
minders.
Sport is inextricably linked
with national prestige, so governments have got in on the act – something once
confined to the Soviet bloc. A recent study found that every Olympic medal won
by an Australian cost the Aussie taxpayer more than $9 million.
That surely places
competitors from impoverished Third World states at an enormous disadvantage
against those from countries that can afford to fund institutes of
high-performance sport. That’s a double blow to the old Olympic ideals of
amateurism and a level playing field.
So much for the competitors,
then. But what about the slackers at home who want to watch the Games on
television?
Sorry, but unless they pay a
Sky TV subscription, they’ll have to make do with edited highlights packages on
Sky-owned Prime. Sky enforces its exclusive rights ferociously, as its ugly
dispute with Fairfax Media and NZME showed.
Some countries – Australia,
for example – have legislation requiring that major sport events be televised
free. But not us.
What this means is that the
sense of community involvement that came from the entire nation watching – a
living room of 4.7 million people – is now the stuff of nostalgia.
I could go on. I could talk
about how corruption has contaminated sport (witness the FIFA scandals), how
corporate sponsors now call the shots, how the Games are a prime target for terrorists (although that's not entirely new - remember Munich?), and how professionalism has spawned a new
breed of overpaid, pampered and often dysfunctional sports celebrities.
I could point out that the Games have imposed a massive financial burden on an economically struggling nation. It's no surprise that Brazilians, according to reports this week, are underwhelmed by the event. They
have more pressing issues on their minds, like surviving.
The common denominator
linking so many of the factors tarnishing the image of sport is, of course, the
baneful influence of money. Not even the Olympics, which once rejoiced in the
spirit of amateurism, are free of its grip.
Capitalism is a wonderful
thing, but there are some things that the vulgar money men should never have
been allowed to get their hooks into. Sport is one.
1 comment:
I think the main reason why we are less excited about the Olympic Games these days is because, whether or not we are Sky subscribers, we have a much greater choice of TV channels to watch. Time was when you simply couldn't avoid the Games if you watched TV.
And there are many other entertainment attractions these days - particularly the cornucopia of diversions offered by mobile phones and tablets and the Web generally.
You also rightly point out that today it's pretty hard to follow the Games today unless you have a Sky subscription.
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