It happens with every Olympics. Every four years, in among the tales of heroes, triumph and gold medals you’ll find a not too subtle stream of skepticism directed towards the event that was once roundly considered to be ‘the greatest show on earth.’
These Olymposceptics are not anti-sport, nor are they even anti-Olympics.
On the contrary, some of them are so passionate about their preferred sports or their favourite athletes that they are skeptical that anything the Olympics can throw up could seriously rival the sporting feats of the sports they spend their days watching and talking about.
How could sports they know so little about, like swimming and diving and wrestling and table tennis ever excite them when so few people know anything about them? These Olymposkeptics are hesitant to embrace the Games and the sports that make it great.
And, they are missing out.
With a little over a week before the final curtain is drawn on Rio’s Games, they need to get over their skepticism and get on board.
Many sports encourage us to sit and watch, rather than ‘do’. One of the by-products of the increasing commercialisation and media saturation of domestic and international sports is that we can consume it every day.
Some sports around the world are played daily. Others, every few days. In Melbourne, the AFL is played each week, from Friday to Sunday from February until early October. If our team loses, the chance of redemption is just a mere few days away.
This is not true of the Olympics. For those who compete, the Olympics is the pointy end of one of the most rigorous and exhaustive commitments I reckon anyone could ever commit to.
When they start their quest four years out from the next Olympic Games they can barely see the mountain they are trying to reach, climb and conquer. By the time they get to the Olympics the old sporting adage of ‘there’s always next week’ simply doesn’t apply.
So, when they stand there before us on our television screens about to dive into the pool, or jump as far as they can or cycle until their legs simply won’t move any further, they are experiencing what many of us may also experience, in our own small way, at some stage of our lives – the culmination of several years of undeniable commitment, dedication and dreaming, with no second chance and no tomorrow.
It is a moment of such extraordinary significance that I think these Olympians deserve our full attention with all skepticism pushed to the side.
After finishing outside the medals in the 100m women’s freestyle event, a clearly shattered Cate and Bronte Campbell reflected on the moment their dreams didn’t come true.
“The Olympics are about trying to win, not about winning,” said the younger sister, Bronte.
Even if you had never seen another swimming race in your life, the message was as simple as it was clear.
They’d lost, but lost trying to win. In fact they’d been trying to win every day for four years. There is no shame in that, and there’s nothing there to be skeptical about either.
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