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Friday 20 July 2012

Olympics pooper

from ldngames.co.uk


I am an Olympics pooper. I have no interest in the Olympics, I don’t care who wins what or how they win it. To me it's just a very expensive series of TV shows with live audiences.

I’m not anti-sport – I like sport, but I don’t like the glitz, celebrity worship, drugs, deceit, corruption and shameless manipulation of the global sporting industry.

I don’t like the way politicians with shiny shoes embarrass us by climbing laboriously onto the bandwagon. I don’t like the circus atmosphere, the whipping up of emotions, the childish antics of winners, the pitiful tears of losers, the endless banal interviews with dull sporting fanatics.

Sport is good, but the Olympics isn’t sport, it’s a circus. It’s a degrading circus too, because all is so deliberate and contrived and so very far removed from the simple exhilaration of running, jumping, swimming and the innocent pleasure of training hand and eye to do what once upon a time they could never do.

It’s even worse than that though, because part of me is amused by the bungling over security, the ludicrous cost escalation and everything that doesn’t quite go according to plan. Part of me hopes the whole thing will be a shambles and that’s not good because I shouldn’t see it like that.

I’m not a vindictive person, but they go too far, make too much of their circus, praise the performers too highly, treat the thing too seriously, spend too much of our money, fail to acknowledge how corrupt it all is, how they never get on top of the drugs issue, try to involve absolutely everyone with their infantile games.

Don't like the Olympics? Wow - how weird is that?

Always, always, always children have to be roped in, their innocence shaming the adults who could never imitate what children naturally possess. 

There’s something rotten about the Olympics. Many of us know it and I suspect our number grows year on year. Maybe one day the fat men in suits will have to do something about the monster they have helped created and on which they so gluttonously feed, but I doubt it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I absolutely agree, AK, and part of my simmering hatred is stoked by memories of the days when the Olympics was mostly confined to track and field and when the only 'cheats' were so-called 'soldiers' from Eastern Europe which was an excuse to allow them to become full-time professionals instead of amateurs. Even so, from time time, real British amateurs would beat them. Today it's just a question of whether our drug addicts can beat theirs!

Angus Dei said...

Is there some sort of sports thing on then?

A K Haart said...

David - yes, we may as well scrap the drug bans and let the freaks get on with it.

Angus - not sure about the sport, but something's going on and it doesn't look good.

Macheath said...

I'm with you there; I can't hep wondering whether we'll wake up when it's over and find that some of those 'just-for-the-Games' restrictions and regulations are staying put for the foreseeable future.

I think they call it 'Legacy'.

Demetrius said...

I "switched off" decades ago when The Games became the Red Army versus the US Universities. The first was supported by East Germany Pharmaceuticals and the second by sundry Western bag carriers.

A K Haart said...

Mac - like special VIP road lanes? I wonder if they dare?

Demetrius - I always thought the East German Pharmaceuticals did so well it was bound to give the game away forever. There's no putting the pills back in the bottle now.

James Higham said...

I’m not anti-sport – I like sport, but I don’t like the glitz, celebrity worship, drugs, deceit, corruption and shameless manipulation of the global sporting industry.

Absolutely and great to see these sentiments being expressed around the net.

A K Haart said...

James - it's surprising how deep this feeling runs isn't it?

Macheath said...

Not just the VIP lanes...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2176639/Car-park-operators-accused-ripping-motorists-following-fold-rise-charges.html