2012 Olympics - A Tiresome Ordeal

There are 50 days until London 2012. I am happy to remind that the Chinese won in 2008 and the Canadians won in 2010. However, I must say there are some clouds overhanging these Olympics. 

The determination and strive for excellence is welcome but it is often clouded in cheating and favoritism. In Salt Lake City, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier skated the better program but a rogue French judge gave the Gold to the Russians (they were later both given Gold medals). What is more telling is that the US, Canada, Germany and Japan voted for the Canadian skaters while Russia, China, Poland and Ukraine voted for the Russians. No wonder they suspected the French judge of cheating; she was clearly the odd one out by crossing the Iron Curtain. In any case, the Salle/Pelletier story on its own is commendable. It brought Canadians closer together (they announced their later gold medal award on the school PA system); it embodied desirable values like love (they skated to “Love Story”), precision and artfulness. Too unfortunate they divorced in 2010.

Also unfortunate that nothing so inspiring as the pair has come along. Instead, a cat and mouse game involving drugs has arisen. The current system relies on finding ways to detect instances of doping and then surprising the athletes. An athlete, then, needs to bet whether or not to risk being caught. A progressive solution would simply be to have unrestricted drug use in sport. With the advent of undetectable drugs (e.g. genetic manipulation) becoming more likely, we’re likely going to arrive at this point anyway (http://www.economist.com/node/21548498). 

The cat and mouse solution misses the root of the problem: that while there are athletes that care very much about excellence, there are just as many that (like most other things in the world) are results oriented. Simply consider the effort host cities go to in dressing themselves up for a 15 day affair. No country understands the costs of dressing up as much as Greece (2004).  Then there’s China, which by all accounts has unfathomable issues (unfathomable by us, that is) yetbuilt a whole Olympic village. I visited the area and cracks are beginning to form at the dome. I cannot think of a worse tourist attraction to go to (that is what it is now). In 2012, London will have to pull this off with the worst primary balance in all of Europe (http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/europes_economies). Good thing is they did just that in 1948 when they last held the games and the country was suffering a recession as they returned to a prewar economy (http://www.economist.com/node/21556281). The difference, though, is they didn’t have China’s spectacle to follow.

I find this whole ordeal tiring. Institutions that dress themselves up should only expect their players to do the same.