Olympics...is there any point anymore?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A Romanian gymnast gets DQed for taking two cold pills and the IOC feels justice has been served. An American weightlifter gets bumped from a silver to a gold because the original gold medalist tested positive, and promptly crows about cheaters never prospering. Marion Jones has a shadow hanging over her for something her HUSBAND did (allegedly!), and somehow no one seems to have a problem with this. Meanwhile, it’s common knowledge that not only is doping more prevalent than ever, so are the means for hiding it, and there aren’t even tests for some substances, like human growth hormone.

Several gymnasts flub vaults because the appratus was set to the improper height, which should by rights render the results invalid. Yet not only is the mistake not discovered until those same gymnasts, not knowing of the error, do disastrously on the succeeding event, the only concession offered them is that they’re allowed to retake the vault. Right then and there. The SANE thing to do would be to call the whole event off, give everyone a chance to recuperate, and redo the event under proper conditions. It never happens, and this appalling injustice goes into the books. Yes, yes, I know these are isolated incidents, which is all right as long as they are corrected. But they almost never are. I suppose I don’t need to remind anyone about the despicable robbing of the '72 USA men’s basketball team of a gold medal, the Canadian synchronized swimmer who was nearly robbed of hers (it took her YEARS to get justice), or the well-publicized corrupt boxing decisions.

And then there’s trash talking. Trumped-up rivalries. Silver and bronze medalists in tears. Coaches edging dangerously close to an NFL mentality.

You know, I recall a time when the Olympics, after they were no longer a showcase for amateur athletics, still stood for fairness, impartiality, and individual triumph. Now it’s just another spectacle of hypocrisy, one-upmanship, and astonishingly brazen injustice. There’s too much of that in mainstream sport already.

Really, what’s the point?

(Oh yeah, I already know about NBC’s coverage, so no need to comment on that. Bleah…)

2

for me, I find the Olympics to be less of an event now that it’s every two years instead of every 4. Nothing is really wrong with it being every other year, particularly since they alternate event types…but it seemed to be more exciting when I was a kid. Perhaps I was just more exciteable as a kid.

3

I think what bothers me the most about the Olympics now is that it’s no longer amateurs competing against amateurs. Nations have now started sending their professional athletes (“Dream Teams”), crushing the opposition with them, and then walking around with their chests puffed out crowing about how their athletes are the world’s best.

Well, duh. They’re pros. The Olympics are supposed to be for amateurs.

4

Nothing takes the excitement out of the Olympic Games more than knowing the results before the Network (who knows what the Public want) broadcasts them. I, for one, would stay up late or get up early to watch an event in which I’m particularly intersted.

I agree that it’s unfair to DQ someone for taking an over-the-counter medication that s/he had no reason to think would be disqualifying. Many OTC meds seems to have the same stimulating effect as coffee. Will they ban caffeine? I think the OOC should make a distinction between “performance enhancing” drugs and drugs that one would reasonably take for a cold.

I agree that the pole-vault should have been re-competed after the athletes had some recuperation time.

Is there still a point to the Olympics? Yes. Seeing “the best athletes in the world” compete inspires people. Someone who would otherwise be sitting at a computer, typing to message boards (:D) might be inspired to go out for a run. Geena Davis was so inspired by the archery cometition at the last Summer Olympics that she almost made the U.S. Team for this year. (Okay, she was way down on the list, but from what I read she was thrown off by the atmospheric conditions. The gold medal winner said she had the ability to contend.) I saw on the news yesterday that American kids are becoming fatter and lazier. The Olympics can serve to get them outside.

Going off on a tangent…

I think the qualifying process for the U.S. Olympic Team is a little unfair. Athletes comepte for a place on the team, and their past performance is not taken into consideration. My example of Geena Davis pointed that out. There was also the girl who injured herself before the tae kwan do qualifying events. Her teammate stepped down so that she could be on the team. An injury at just the wrong time can dash a potential Olympian’s chances of competing. And we may not be sending out best athletes, but only the best one on a particular day. Happens a lot.

5

I second Pipeliner’s sentiment. I’d probably be more excited about the Olympics if I was watching the common man/woman competing. If I want to watch professional sports, I’ll watch professional sports. The Olympics should be the average person’s opportunity to shine. As it is, I only watch the Olympics during dinner if there’s nothing else good on TV.

6

The Olympics have wayyyyy too many events, IMHO. Call it medal inflation, if you will. Personally, I would like to see the Olympics pared back to just a couple dozen traditional events, but then, that just wouldn’t suit the television advertisers, would it?

7

Sorry to bust your bubble, Pipeliner, but the Olympics have LONG allowed professional athletes in the Olympics. They just looked the other way; otherwise, there’d have been no Olympics at all. Do you think Russian goalie Tretiak or any of his teammates did all that much as officers in the Russian Army? No. They were paid to play hockey. (Did you see the Red Army team outplaying NHL All-Star teams back in the Seventies?) Ditto for damn near every other Soviet Bloc country. And the Winter Olympics openly allowed professional skiers. In summer, bicyclists and tracksters, too. The line between amateur and pro was rarely ever clear and long largely ignored outside the US.

It was a total farce to have our college kids playing against the European players who, when not in the Olympics, were playing in professional leagues.

It’s just too damned bad that our basketball pros are that much better than their basketball pros.

8

One of the Olympics drawbacks now (if you are a USA fan), is that there is no one enemy team. The Russian athletes are no longer strangers who just show up every four years and kick ass. Instead, they are just another country that does pretty well. We don’t even have a big rivalry with China or Cuba, although the baseball competition did get heated.

We aren’t fighting the Cold War at the Olympics anymore. As distasteful as that may have been, it did make for good theater.

9

Thanks for the replies, and good points all. But what I was really getting at was the general climate of dishonesty that seems to hover over every Olympiad. The IOC is clinging to a horribly flawed drug policy that has NO CHANCE of ever working, in which only the most careless dopers get caught, yet they won’t do the practical thing and end it…and meanwhile, they’ve patted themselves on the back for robbing that poor gymnast. And after every wrong decision or outcome, nobody does a damn thing about it; the fraudulent result goes into the books as if it were just part of the game.

I can handle professionalism, sloppy coverage (still a lot better than CBS’s, by the way), and a few events too many (which usually don’t get shown anyway). But any institution in which unfairness is accepted as normal should set off alarm bells. Not five events go by where I don’t fear yet another miscarriage of justice. The world showcase is a wonderful spectacle in any event, but that nagging fear just takes some of the enjoyment out of it.

Any comments?

10

Well,look at it this way, what do the Olympics represent?

Togetherness of the human race.

Pursuit of dreams.

Courage.

In a day and age were such attributes are constantly obviated in favor of selfishness, greed and envy, why not have an event that, for 2 magical weeks, exalts the greatest qualities of the human race in detriment of its most demeaning manifestations?

The Olympics rock, plain and simple. You can call me a sentimentalist, you can call me a romantic, you might even say that I am a dreamer–damn you, Mark Chapman–but I am not the only one…

…I hope someday you join me, and we all could live as one.

Maybe next Olympics, perhaps?

11

Submitted for your disapproval, if not complete disgust: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/2000/wrestling/news/2000/09/30/mccallum_henson/

My god. Another atrocity for the ages, and, per usual, nobody’s doing a goddam thing, and we’re all supposed to just put it behind us.

This is beyond madness. Professional boxing does not have this much blatant corruption. I’ve reached the point where I’d file protests night and day if I thought it’d do any good. Shattering dreams and acting like it was nothing is pure evil. I know…I’ve lived through that crap for too long.