Ring, Ring

Hi, I am Gerry, and I hate the Olympics.

I wasn’t always that way. I used to watch the games from the comfort of my living room whenever I had the chance. I especially enjoyed the Winter Games as Canada seemed to have a better chance of winning medals at that event, but I also enjoyed the Summer Games.

Then came a series of scandals starting at the 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson had set a new world record in the 100-metre dash, but would later be disqualified for a doping offence. Prior to this, the only people I had ever heard of failing doping tests were weightlifters from behind the Iron Curtain. Suddenly, the media talked about doping problems throughout all types of sports.

One expert was recently asked about doping in sports. He said that many athletes are often told about the possible effects of drugs, such as sterility, skin disorders, earlier death, etc. Unfortunately, it is the athlete’s nature to want to win, and those around him or her often share that attitude.

I later heard of María José Martínez Patiño, a Spanish female elite hurdler who was stripped of almost everything, including scholarships, when a routine sports test revealed she had a both an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. As far as sports organisers were concerned, she was not a woman and could not compete in female sports. It turned out she had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). Others with AIS had been found out in the past and given the opportunity to fake an injury and fade out of the limelight. She decided to compete anyway, and after the race the results of the “sex test” were revealed and she was promptly disqualified. Specialists were needed to show that her body was insensitive to the action of androgens and developed fully into that of a girl, and then a woman, instead of a boy, and then a man. This, of course, meant the test was not sufficient for determining whether someone should be allowed to take part in the Games as a woman. She was eventually reinstated, but only after suffering much humiliation.

Finally, as I continued to observe and analyse world events and the way politics often made their way into the Olympics, I suddenly realised (and I’m slow when it comes to this, I know) that the Olympics had become nothing more than a cold war playground. The goal wasn’t so much to win medals or perform personal bests, but to beat the tar out of THEM! We didn’t just want our athletes to win. We wanted them to beat those from the USSR, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, China and other countries with communist regimes. (Note that three of the above-mentioned countries don’t even exist anymore under those names.)

On top of all that, the 2010 Vancouver Games have gotten a lot of pre-games coverage, including how the homeless are essentially uprooted and moved away just to somehow make the area look better. The City of Vancouver has even passed by-laws that prohibit anyone from protesting over a forty-block area of the city. No signs, no shouting slogans if authorities believe it might disturb people’s experience of the games. Imagine what the penalty might be!

This is for the glory of sport? Sorry. I can no longer buy that argument. Especially now that professional athletes are competing as well.