Why we need more politics in sport
Roar Guru
By Steve Kaless, 7 Aug 2008 Steve Kaless is a Roar Guru
The most overheard phrase around the Olympics must surely be “there should be no politics in sport.” What a load of rubbish! There should be more, lots more. It makes it more interesting.
The most exciting part of these year’s Olympic build up is wondering just when the Chinese might roll out the tanks.
Giving the Games to a dictatorship was a stroke of genius by the less than democratic IOC as it has given the preparation a whole new high security feel.
You can just feel the paranoia starting to tip over the edge. All we need is a few Japanese supporters to get carried away when they defeat the old enemy in a swimming race and the fun could really start.
While Sydneysiders were wondering whether or not enough tourists would buy enough “G’day Mate!” t-shirts, visitors to China will be wondering if they’ll see the anti-aircraft missiles next to the main stadium in full effect.
Make no mistake, politics is always in sport.
If there was no politics in sport, why do politicians constantly take up a prime seat at every major sporting event.
If you want no politics in sport, then that follows that you want no government funding of sport either.
Just think where the rugby league versus rugby union debate would be if competitors could sling arrows dipped in the poison of the NSW Labour Governments and France’s Vichy regime.
Nowhere, that’s where.
Political regimes everywhere use the Olympics to justify their madness.
Why do you think communist regimes of the past ran such barbaric training academics to ensure gold, gold, gold!
That medal table is meant to replace every other form of judging a country.
I think there could be one major improvement made to the medal table. I propose that at the end of the Olympics, the bottom three countries are relegated to another planet.
This would also have the added advantage of easing concerns with overpopulation.
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Spiro Zavos said | August 7th 2008 @ 10:21am | Report comment
It would be a great thing if Olympic medal tallies replaced the killing fields as the test of ideology and nationalism. In a sense this has happened with countries drugging up their athletes to show how superior their political system, with athletes winning bags of medals, over other political systems.
The real problem is when this sporting chauvinism becomes too deeply embedded in a totalitarian government that is running the Games. We saw the evil effects of this in 1936 at the Berlin Games. Unfortunately, the Chinese Communist Party regime is using the Games as a force of represssion for their people.
I see two competing forces at work. The pressure of 20,000 journalists reporting inside China and billions of people watching the Games around the world forcing a truthful exposition of life in China, and the vast and often vicious reach of the CP authorities intent on reducing the extent of that exposition.
Let the truth Games begin, as well as the official Games!