When It Comes to the Olympics, I Am a Traditionalist
I am not a fanatic when it comes to the Olympic Games. There is always a smell of corruption and global politics surrounding the games. The selection process for the next hosting city isn’t your typical wining and dining. There is so much at stake that it becomes a lobbyist wet dream. That’s only the beginning. Construction projects of this scale and timeline come with lots of sticky fingers and sadly plenty of Greek tragedy.
Olympic Games also provide a stage for a good geo-political tussle. I can still remember when the Russian team boycotted the LA games in response to the American team sitting out the Moscow games.
And then there is state-organized doping, from the East German women team with mustaches to the recent Winter Olympics in Sochi, as depicted in the surprising documentary Icarus.
The Olympic Games are hardly about the sport.
And yet, I do watch some of it: from the opening ceremony, the 100m sprint, to the sob stories overcoming adversity to get there on NBC. There is something about watching the best of the best compete.
Let’s stick the traditional Olympic sports: track and field, swimming, wrestling, sailing, and even archery. Can we all agree to stop the experiments with skateboarding. They are not an Olympic sport. I even question equestrian as being a true Olympic sport, unless we start randomly assigning horses to riders. Stick to the basics and the sports who don’t normally get the attention they deserve. Skip basketball, soccer and even cycling. The Greeks didn’t have bicycles, did they?