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Olympic ideals, a perfect world… and reality

By G.D. Maxwell Wow! Gold in Hand Wringing. Gold in Self-Flagellation. Gold, Silver and Bronze in Second Guessing. Nowhere near the podium in Self-Esteem. Canada, you’re a powerhouse at the Angst Olympics. You rock, babe.

By G.D. Maxwell

Wow! Gold in Hand Wringing. Gold in Self-Flagellation. Gold, Silver and Bronze in Second Guessing. Nowhere near the podium in Self-Esteem. Canada, you’re a powerhouse at the Angst Olympics. You rock, babe.

Just when things were beginning to look up for the jocks – both on the fields of battle and in the comfy armchairs across the Great White North – just when Canada was finally beginning to win medals in sports few knew were even Olympic events, just as the gold and the expectation of gold was starting to roll in in volumes unseen since the last annual report of Bre-X, Perdita stumbles and casts the National Psyche into a wing of Olympic perdition not visited since our last period of Seoul Searching. Bad trip, man.

A collective gasp rippled across the nation and was reportedly heard as far away as Buffalo. Guttural choking noises reminiscent of Inuit throat singing generated white noise to mask the wailing of those who invested perhaps a bit too much in the great Greek tragedy. The comforting strains of Oh No Canada were played by mournful streetcorner violinists. And everywhere, there was a growing suspicion we had, in a biblical sense, reaped what we’d sown – the bittersweet destruction of heightened, yea almost prideful, expectations. The gold medal was "ours" to lose and lose it we did.

I feel Perdita’s pain. It would be inhuman not to and when I last looked at my organ donor card, Human was still the box checked off.

I’m not sure I feel Canada’s pain though.

The biennial Olympic scourging, complete with Greek Chorus, is louder and longer this instalment than usual. Perhaps it’s the timing, coming as it does during the malaise of summer’s end and the post-coital lethargy still suffered from a national election and the subsequent disappearance of all things politic. Did Paul Martin at least have the courtesy to leave a twenty on the dresser before he got up and tip-toed out?

With so little to hold our diminished attention, CBC’s endless coverage of the Bummer Olympics has rushed in to fill the void. And, as usual, Canada’s left to wonder why we’re getting the stuffing beaten out of us by such athletic powerhouses as Thailand. Ironically, the successes we share, the medals our athletes win, seem almost to gently drive the sliver of doubt and discomfort a little further under our national fingernail. It’s as though an occasional win is worse than no win at all.

And so we ponderously ponder the future. The national debate, as it is after every Olympics, is nearly engaged: Should Canada go for the gusto? Should Canada pour public money into funding "amateur" athletics?

Media have been dripping with stories of athletes forced to make great personal sacrifices to pursue their sport. Some have taken joejobs to eke out a meagre living while they train. Some have had to tap parents and friends, hold fundraisers and sell brownies to hire coaches. Many have put careers and education on hold to single-mindedly race after their dreams. All seem to want me to fund, to a greater or lesser degree, their dream.

Wake up Chump! That’s life. Now getcher grubby hands out of my pockets.

I’m tired of hearing athletes whine about what tough choices and sacrifices they’ve had to make to pursue their sport. I remember making those same tough choices when I finally selected Making a Living from the smorg of life. How I agonized between that and choosing instead some single-minded, hedonistic endeavour. How much easier it would have been to choose differently if I could have suckered someone else into supporting me while I did.

In a perfect world, I would have no objection to federal funding for elite athletes. But in a perfect world, our various levels of government wouldn’t be pissing away gazillions of dollars bailing out American packinghouses, Bombardier and whatever name Skeena Cellulose is losing money under these days.

In a perfect world, Bribeola wouldn’t be flung after the likes of Intrawest to the tune of another $95 million federal and provincial dollars to puff up their investment in Mt. Tremblant.

In a perfect world, every rabidly free market capitalist crying about level playing fields wouldn’t be lined up for corporate welfare whenever their misguided strategy backfired and threatened their continuing mediocrity.

In a perfect world, Robert Milton would be voted out of the country before he manages to completely corkscrew Air Canada into the runway.

In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be potholes the size of swimming pools on Canada’s major highways. There wouldn’t be people sitting at home, watching the Olympics on television and wondering how many more years they have to wait for a new hip, knee, patched-up heart or kidney transplant.

And in a perfect world, I’d be happy to throw some of those millions we’d save by eliminating the above misadventures toward athletes who have wholly forgotten – if they ever had a clue to begin with – the fundamental principles the Olympic movement abandoned decades ago.

Before being hijacked by, in turn, geopolitical power tripping and professional athletics, the Olympics, at least on paper, was all about sport as part of a well-rounded life. If it doesn’t make the IOC choke on its own words, I shall quote from Fundamental Principles numbers 2 and 3:

" Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles ."

" The goal of Olympism is to place everywhere sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity ."

Nice words, eh?

So ’splain to me the "balance" of full-time, professional amateur athletics. Where’s the blend of sport, culture and education? Where’s the good example and respect for universal ethical principles so pervasive in this Olympic machine that the biggest growth is in its anti-doping arm? Where’s the dignity in what’s become an escalating arms race between pharmaceutically-enhanced freakoids and clean athletes duped into believing those nice words?

And if this all seems too over the top, consider the voices prophesying that this may be one of the last Olympics we watch before a new wave of genetically enhanced athletes storm onto the world’s stage. Gene therapies currently being tested and yet to be developed hold the promise – threat – of fundamentally changing what we’ve come to think of as the standard human body.

A far better idea than funding elite athletes may be to simply fund efforts to make sport a more balanced part of everyone’s life and let the Olympics fade back into the obscurity they enjoyed before Pierre de Coubertin breathed life back into them.