Olympic Games and Some Questions

By Daniel Dessinger

April 10, 2008

SI’s senior columnist Frank Deford is one of my favorite writers. Not only he knows sports inside out but he is a terrific writer as well.

It’s always a pleasure to read what he thinks on any topic.

Deford’s recent column on Olympics again got me thinking about the whole hoopla around the Olympic torch, the Tibet issue, etc.

First off, did you know that the Olympic torch itself was invented by the Nazis, in 1936?! I certainly did not know that.

Second, I believe that as long as China hosts this year’s Olympics she cannot eat her cake and have it too.

In return for the prestige and publicity of the Olympics she has to endure non-violent protests of her occupation of Tibet. What goes around comes around.

To those who say sports and politics should not be mixed, I say: what is being protested is neither the Olympics nor the Chinese people but the foreign policy of the Chinese Communist Party, and for a very legitimate reason at that.

But come to think of it, are we perhaps making too much of the Olympics itself?

What’s the big deal about track and field, anyways?

Don't get me wrong. I love track and field and I'm an amateur runner myself. I try to do my 8 to 10 miles every week.

But as Deford asks, “how many of you can even name a single American track athlete in this year's Games? How many of you can name a single track athlete from any nation?”

The International Olympics Committee can call the Olympics a “movement” or whatever it wants but we know what it is – it's a big fat commercial event, attended by all the semi-amateur athletes that under-the-table "incentives" can "motivate."

Is there anyone among you who still believes that our modern day Olympics has anything in common with the original Greek sport event of its day?

As a spectator event, Olympics is a great diversion. It's fun and entertaining.

But all this torch relay charade with the symbol of “supposedly-amateur spirit” jumping from one puzzling city to another and turning into a tug of war between the Chinese government and her detractors is a little bit too much for me.

Why don’t we just collect the billions of dollars spent on Olympics every four years across the globe and spend it on something truly worthwhile, like eradicating HIV/AIDS perhaps? Or bringing a laptop computer to every child in the world?

In the very least, can we please change the symbol of Olympics to something else? Honoring anything that was originally invented by Hitler’s crack troop of designers still rubs me the wrong way.