These Olympics Are Bullshit, but the Bullshit I Need

As a former sports writer, I normally get burnt out quick on sappy articles about the competitive spirit and the true meaning of the Olympic Games. Pieces like that almost always come to lazy, sentimental conclusions that are only drawn up for sports like swimming and gymnastics once every four years.

I know, because I’ve written such things.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but look around at the world’s current events and wish that’s exactly what we were getting from Rio, but as you might expect, there is still much talk of all the problems of these Games. Some people I’ve talked to say they simply won’t watch it. Apparently, they aren’t alone.

The opening ceremony for the Rio Olympics had the lowest TV ratings since the 1992 Games in Barcelona. This week, the Daily Mail reported a 32% drop in ratings so far for these Games, just showcasing people’s disgust with what has gone on as Brazil prepped for this event.

The Olympics are usually a beam of light in all the darkness of political corruption, the spread of ideologies that endorse terror, cultures too complacent or stubborn to recognize their own stupidity, and the usual blend of disease, famine and warfare. That glimmer of hope in a relentlessly dreary world, albeit fleeting and inconsequential, is important to us.

Call it cheesy, sentimental shit, as I often have. You’re right. It is. But if you’ve never turned on an Olympics and seen something that made you say, “damn, that was awesome,” then you need to rethink your life.

The Olympics is a testament to the human will to compete, to win, to achieve great feats, to come together with people from around the world to peacefully partake in activities that show us more about how much we have in common than how different we are.

But I think we all understand the jaded mentality surrounding these games, because I think we all feel that way to a certain extent.

In 2016, rowers have to navigate a river of shit to get to cleaner waters near the finish line, worrying along the way about whether or not they ingest more than a few tablespoons of this sludge, and if they do, they have a very good chance of contracting a virus.

As viruses go, I guess the water isn’t a big deal, since the Games are actually being held in the epicenter of the current Zika pandemic.

Crime throughout Rio and security for these games is as major a concern as any post 9/11 event, but here, even sporting officials have to fear for their lives. One Russian official found this out when he was forced to exhaust his jiu-jitsu repertoire to protect his family during an attempted armed robbery.

In this lovely edition of the Olympics, we can’t get through the torch lighting ceremony before protesters start throwing rocks. And I’m not faulting them. If I were a working class Brazilian facing the quality of life issues that country faces, I’d be throwing anything I could get my hands on at any symbol of this event. Because to them, the Olympics don’t symbolize hope and athletic endeavor right now, they symbolize corruption, greed and a terrifying lack of governmental transparency and accountability. In a way, they have begun to symbolize that to the rest of us as well, and the only way we can throw a rock at it is to look away from the Games.

The world is fucked, the Olympics are fucked, there is no hope. Right?

In a time where one major world power is facing its ugliest election in recent history, another is taking an increasingly aggressive military stance and yet another is cutting itself off from its neighbors, most people would hope the sights being broadcast from Rio can provide the respite we’d all like from the real world problems of the day rather than simply enhancing the fact that yes, there is even a ton of trouble in this seemingly tropical paradise.

At this particular moment, an inspirational Olympic Games full of heroism and unbelievable achievements is just what the doctor ordered to raise global morale and remind us that we’re all human and there is no reason we can’t come together in peace once in a while.

All the sentimental sappy shit we sports writers make a living on is still happening. Amazing feats are still occurring and athletes are still coming together across cultural lines in the name of sport. I get it. But that black cloud of what we know about what went into Rio hosting these Games hangs over the various contests each day.

Even the athletes themselves are a source of controversy. The Russian delegation arrived with several athletes having tested positive in a doping scandal, fueling a refreshed narrative of clean athletes versus juiced up ones, but also highlighting the fact that doping is not taken seriously enough by the International Olympic Committee to warrant a significant punishment. The truth is, we have no clue who is on what.

While I’m sure we all enjoyed the story of American Lilly King beating Russian Yulia Efimova by competing clean, would it at all surprise anyone if in a month King tests positive for something? That would fit right in with what we’ve come to expect from these Games and the times we live in, as anything decent seems to have been corrupted by the systems and world around it.

This Olympic Games will not be remembered in a positive light for many. The politics surrounding them is playing out right there in the host city this time and we know that the long term impact of the Olympics for Rio will be, at best, negligible. The socially impactful/infrastructure investments like public transportation and improvements to Rio’s sewage systems that were promised by the bidding committee when Rio won the ability to host the games have been abandoned or merely used to enhance the lives the nation’s richest citizens.

Meanwhile, exorbitant amounts of money that could have helped improve Brazil’s healthcare system have been diverted into the pockets of corrupt politicians and projects that will have little use in a few weeks’ time.

Not Unique to Our Times

Is all of this a first though? Are doping, political turmoil and corruption unprecedented throughout Olympic history? Is talk of boycotting the Olympics, as happened prior to these Games, unusual? Is Brazil’s mistreatment of its poor or the sloppy fashion in which it prepared its facilities all that rare?

Not really.

In 1936, the debate over whether American athletes should attend the games hosted in Nazi held Germany was heated to say the least. And much like Brazil was promised a lasting legacy due to development that the games would cause, the Berlin facilities were touted as the beginning of the city’s rebirth as Germania, the capital of Hitler’s Reich. That vision never came to fruition either, thankfully.

In 1980, the U.S. actually did boycott the Games, with President Jimmy Carter announcing in March of that year that the U.S. would not send any participants to the Moscow Olympics.

Four years later, 14 eastern bloc countries refused to send athletes to the Games in Los Angeles.

Boycotts are by no means an unusual topic. So many nations have discussed the possibility over the years due to controversies surrounding the hosts, it’s practically an Olympic tradition for someone to consider boycotting the Games.

Doping is far from new as we know now from the Lance Armstrong era of cycling and as for the horror stories associated with the staging of the Games, they are actually all too common throughout history as well.

In 1964, the Japanese government destroyed waterways and valuable land in the name of building highways and rail lines to host the Olympics in Tokyo, something the city will do again in 2020. They displaced thousands of citizens in the process in order to build stadiums and parking lots. Most infamously, perhaps, was the extermination of more than 200,000 stray dogs and cats using a device that suffocated them with carbon dioxide.

Four years later, the Olympics hit Mexico City, and one of the most disturbing incidents of covering up politics to put on a pretty face for the Games took place just 10 days before the torch was lit.

The Mexican government, in an attempt squash a growing student movement opposed to its authoritarian regime, gunned down an unknown number of people in Tlatelolco Plaza who were meeting to organize demonstrations. The number of victims varies between official and eyewitness accounts, ranging from 4–3,000. The Tlatelolco Massacre was kept as quiet as was possible by Mexican officials who assured the IOC all would be well for the Games.

One of the few accounts of the massacre to make headlines can be found in the British newspaper The Guardian.

Other host cities have hid their poor in equally disturbing fashion to the Olympic themed signage and police units Brazil uses to keep event goers from its favelas. In 1980, the communist leadership of Russia launched a two week long campaign to remove anyone they deemed an alcoholic, drug addict or undesirable from Moscow.

In 1996, the city of Atlanta, in partnership with the police department and an NGO named Project Homeward Bound, rounded up homeless citizens. Resorting to incarceration, scare tactics to chase them out of town and even buying them bus tickets to anywhere they may have family members, the city was effective in scrubbing its homeless population to protect its image for the Games. The result was gentrification, much like what we are seeing in parts of Brazil today. Downtown homeless shelters were redeveloped and the city’s public housing options were dissipated. Low income residents were essentially driven out of their neighborhoods.

The lies and lack of foresight are not uncommon either. The 2000 Games in Sydney were sold on the promise of a tourism boom that never came, while Athens and Beijing are both littered with the infamous “white elephants,” a name given to an expensive facility that no longer has any use and simply sits rotting.

But despite the errors of the past, I would ask, has an Olympic Games ever been met with such vitriol and disgust as these Rio Games? The closest example is perhaps the most recent example, that of Sochi, where corruption and poor planning overshadowed the Winter Olympics and left a sour taste in the mouths of fans and competitors alike.

Undoubtedly, we the Olympic loving viewer are more aware of Rio’s faults than we were of Mexico City’s, Tokyo’s or Atlanta’s. Thanks to the 24/7 news cycle and social media, we now see every development, every mistake a host nation makes. Because of that, Rio’s ugliness lives in plain sight, where others remained in the dark or were swept under a rug.

In the end, we shouldn’t necessarily be so mad about these Games, as much as we should be angered by why this seems to be the ordinary course of events when it comes to hosting an Olympics. Let’s begin discussing how to address the IOC’s (not to mention FIFA’s) absurd obsession with holding their events in obscure locations that don’t possess the infrastructure, facilities or labor standards to play host at the time of bidding.

Let’s push for change in how and where these events are organized and what is expected of the host city and nation or as history tells us, none of this is going to change.

Hanging on to the Love of the Games

There have been a handful of articles making the rounds on the internet comparing 2016 to 1968. While that is tempting, the truth is it’s a bit off base. Conditions of the two times are very different, but one thing that year did have was those Mexico City Olympics, an event often remembered for this photograph.

At the time, it was a controversial statement of race relations in America and created a universal awareness of the African American determination to fight for equality in this country. It’s an enduring symbol that we all recognize, even if you weren’t born at the time. It was the most important image of those games, one that will live on forever.

Like Jesse Owens standing on the podium in the face of Hitler’s regime, Keri Strugg fighting through immense pain in 1996 to win the first ever gold medal for team USA gymnastics, Swiss marathon runner Gabriela Anderson willing herself over the finish line in 1984 despite collapsing internally, the Miracle on Ice or any of the other memories that encompass why we love the Olympics, that moment makes hanging on to your love of the Games worthwhile.

What will this Olympics moment be? Will it be the triumph of clean athletes over dirty ones? Will it be someone making a grand statement on the politics of the day? Will we see some shining act of bravery, in which one athlete overcomes fear, pain and the odds to be crowned a champion? I hope so, because I think we could all use a little bit of that right now.

There is no doubt, we have to change how we view the way the Games unfold. The politics, the socio-economic implications have to change and improve. We can’t ignore that. But maybe it’s just as important that we don’t lose this one thing that we can all watch, enjoy and remember.

Many expected the problems to be swept under the rug once the torch was lit. But in the early stages of these Games, it hasn’t always been the case, because the media outlets covering the Olympics have little choice but to discuss the reality. Ignoring the controversies would only bring them shame for doing so 30 minutes later when we see what’s really going on around Rio via our social media feeds.

Instead, they have to be honest about it and hope that our love of the Games will endure, that athletic achievements somehow rise up out of all the corruption and politics to make us remember that the spirit of this event is good, even if the staging and execution of it is a corrupt sham that needs to be overhauled.

No attempts to cover Rio’s problems are going to save its legacy. The only thing that can do that is fixing the broken process that allowed this edition of the Games to happen this way in the first place.

Legacies, however, are for the future. Today, I just want to watch Michael Phelps swim and enjoy it.