Olympic Rant

I can’t help it; I love to watch the Olympic competitions. That goes for the Winter games almost as much as the Summer ones. I wish I could say the same about our television production of the games, or about the organization of the games themselves.

My biggest beef with the games’ organization and their telecast is with the nationalistic slant of both. I abhor the obsession with “hardware”—the medal count by country is the worst example, but it goes on and on from there. Why is it a big deal if Bode Miller does not win a medal, or the U.S. only wins two medals in Alpine skiing? Bob Costas seems to blame Miller, or the U.S. ski team, if they don’t live up to the hype which he and his network had the principal role in creating. Lindsey Jacobellis becomes a national pariah because she tried a snowboarding trick and fell from gold to silver in her race. How do you think she feels about it? How do we shut him up?

I could not stomach the way that the network gave so much prominence to the feud between the U.S. speed skaters Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis. OK, they’re rivals and don’t really want to play together; maybe that’s what they had to do as part of their psychological motivation process. Who cares? It’s an individual sport, and basically one-on-one vs. the clock. Davis was clearly portrayed as The Bad Guy because he didn’t want to be in the relay and didn’t smile enough for the camera or wax poetic on the significance of being the “first African-American to win gold in the Winter games”: When he could have said, “gee, I guess it proves that cold weather doesn’t freeze our brains, after all!”

Think of how many events you saw (if you were watching American TV) when all you really saw were the Americans’ runs and that of the eventual winner. To give one silly example, the men’s 1500m speed skate event: the hype for days had been about the four American gold-medal winners facing off in the event. Then, the night of the telecast of the event, they showed in the preview the names of the four Americans, plus an Italian: I could tell at that moment who won the gold!

Too much money, too much cost—those are the excuses for all the nonsense. Without the huge network contract, and the national Olympic committees, we couldn’t have the pricey venues, the opening and closing spectaculars, etc.

I say, we can do without all that. Have the individual sport federations issue the invitations, as many as they can afford. The athletes should compete without flags and national anthems. The events should be broadcast live, then repeated in prime time if necessary. Close down the national organizing committees, and their stupid votes for future sites of the games. The venues should be Athens—every time—for summer, and some place that’s high enough and close enough to the poles that they can keep the winter games there every time, even 50 years from now when the polar icecaps are seasonal. And, please, get rid of that ridiculous short-track speed skating. That’s no sport: it’s a cross between roller derby and roulette.

There will still be plenty of glory for those who win, and for those who are heroic but don’t win. In the athletes’ home country, yes, but also everywhere else. That’s the Olympic way.