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This is the most depressing article about the Olympics that I have ever read.
It’s about how Australian athletes performed in Rio, but there is not a single athlete named in it. There is no mention of race tactics, game plans, training or ball skills. But there are mentions of:
Is this what we want? When we urge on our Olympic heroes, hoping for the best possible result, is this the sort of aftermath we demand, should that result not pan out?
As is customary following the Games, but especially when Australians don’t do as well as expected, there’s a lot of talk about what the Olympics cost us. Articles measuring the “price of a gold medal” and so forth. And indeed, the cost to taxpayers is pretty hefty.
On a purely economic basis, there’s a case for cutting back a bit. At the very least, the idea of a HECS-style scheme for publicly-funded athletes seems a sound one, notwithstanding protests from those who either don’t understand how HECS works or think being good at sport places you above those who are good at science or law.
But I think for the average sports fan, there’s an even more compelling reason to pull back on the funding of elite sport, because it’s become clear, and becomes clearer with every article about corporate models and Winning Edge, that the Olympics is now costing us a lot more than just our taxes: it’s costing us the very soul of sport.
What a wonderful thing it is to cheer an athlete on, hoping they can achieve their dreams. What a wonderful thing it must be to be that athlete, knowing there are multitudes on your side, willing you to glory.
But what a terrible thing it is to see an athlete fall short, and react with the petulant question, “What are we paying you for?” What a terrible thing it must be to come away from the contest without the medal you’ve dreamed of, and feel that you have not only failed to win, but failed to justify an investment.
What a terrible thing it is for sports fans to find themselves turning into shareholders.
To see Cate Campbell after her disappointing solo swims in Rio, giving quavering interviews in which she sought desperately to reassure us – but surely more than that, to reassure herself – that winning or losing gold was not the final measure of her worth, was to experience a queasy feeling in the stomach; a hunch that somewhere, somehow, sport had become more than sport… and therefore less than sport.
Because we know Campbell has spent the last four years training obsessively for that brief moment in the spotlight. It has consumed her waking life: everything she has done has been devoted to the acquisition of a gold medal.
The despair at finding it was all for nought must be devastating. The knowledge that at home, thousands of her fellow Australians were folding their arms, shaking their heads and saying, “We’re very disappointed in you” must make it intolerable.
And maybe, just maybe, the piling of pressure upon pressure is what made winning so horribly hard this time anyway. We expect our champions to perform not just under the pressure of their own expectations, the burning gaze of the international audience, and the hopes of a nation, but also the pressure of being an investment?
Could there be any more effective way to drain sport of all its vibrancy and enjoyment than to treat it as a balance sheet – funds inputted, desired rate of return either achieved or missed?
We will always be disappointed when the sportspeople who represent the teams we support fail. That’s the essence of sport, and why it’s more than just entertainment. But it’s also more than just business. We can’t let our disappointment turn into entitlement.
The medals our Olympians win are not ours, and the medals they lose, we have not lost. When they win we should be happy for them, and when they lose we should commiserate. But we should never cast a cold, calculating eye on them and let ourselves believe we’ve been somehow ripped off.
If we do, we not only compound the misery that they no doubt already feel at having not quite scaled the peak, we not only make their life’s pursuit of their sporting passion a little less joyful: we cheat ourselves of joy also.
Once we start viewing sport in terms not of what we wish for, but of what we are owed, we are no longer sports lovers. We’re nothing but investors, and sport is no longer the respite from the drab grind of the world – it’s just another part of it.