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Bissinger: Turn off The Olympic Lights

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Boom_70, Apr 13, 2008.

  1. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    I don't think the Olympics should be shut down, but they certainly are beholden much more to monetary interests than ever before.

    The U.S ruined the Olympics in 1984, and we ruined the World Cup in 1994. We showed just how much money can be made while hosting an international sporting event. And how it can be even more lucrative when having to only build a minimal number of new venues, and minimal new infrastructure.

    Now, certain countries cannot dream of hosting either event unless the IOC (or FIFA) is feeling like opening its coffers to help make it happen.
     
  2. The Olympics are a hopeless, moneygrubbing sham that have regularly celebrated the worst regimes in history, and they are little more than festivals of organized corporate greed couched in some of the most noxious public hypocrisy ever ginned up by the hand of man.
    So shut them down.
     
  3. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    No compassion for the athletes? Not the 1% who compete for the endorsements, but those who really do invest their entire lives in Olympic competition?
     
  4. Not a lot, no.
    They still have world championships in every sport.
    I'll spare most of my compassion for the Chinese dissidents who have spoken out against these Games and then disappeared.
     
  5. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    Unfortunately, you're wrong in this case. Shutting down the Games because there are problems is a piss-poor approach. Trying to fix them would be a much better approach. But because many people feel it would be too hard, they'd rather take the lazy approach.
     
  6. I don't want to shut down the Games because there are problems.
    I want to shut them down becuase they are thoroughly and fundamentally amoral and corrupt and there's no way to run them honestly.
     
  7. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    Really? So we punish the athletes because of bad mismanagement? That's like disbanding the Department of the Health and Human Services because upper management is filled with idiots.

    And despite what you say, winning Olympic gold, on such a huge world stage, means a lot more to many athletes than just winning the world championship. How many world champs do you remember versus Olympic gold medal winners?
     
  8. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member

    Then, there are the Bodes of the world.
     
  9. Elliotte Friedman

    Elliotte Friedman Moderator Staff Member

    Fenian,

    The reason I hope these Games continue is not because I'm covering beach volleyball, but because it's putting greater pressure on China than ever. There is certainly the possibility that no one will care after the closing ceremonies, but everyone cares now. All of a sudden, there is intense scrutiny on Tibet, on Darfur, on the country's disgusting environmental record, on human rights.

    And it's only going to increase. There is no way the country can stop journalists from writing/reporting whatever they want once they get there this summer. There are going to be protests. Athletes are going to speak out once their events are over. It's going to make the Chinese government uncomfortable.

    That's what these games can deliver.
     
  10. EE94

    EE94 Guest

    I agree. Killing the Olympics is extremely short-sighted. As for the commercialism he bemoans, the Olympics are the only sporting event I know where corporate logos are not allowed in the field of play - in arenas, anywhere.
    Yes, corporations sponsor the Games - try to find anything other than a Coke product in a venue - but that's hardly the end of the world.

    As for the drug-users, the athletes that do use them are a small percentage of those who participate.

    The Olympics, for the most part, display the best of humanity and though that's mostly physical, most of the athletes who participate are bright, committed, disciplined, just decent people.

    to wit:

    Lawrence Lemieux (born November 12, 1955 in Edmonton, Alberta) is a Canadian sailor, who competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in the Finn class.

    On September 24, 1988, the sailing competition was underway at Pusan, 32 kilometers from South Korea's capital of Seoul, the main Olympic site. The conditions for sailing had unexpectedly become dangerous. Acceptable winds of fifteen knots had escalated at times to 35 knots. The waters were playing havoc with boats and crews. In the 470 class, two sailors on the Singapore team, Joseph Chan and Shaw Her Siew, were thrown into the water, suffering injuries and unable to right their boat. The situation was a dangerous one.

    Sailing alone near the half point in his race on the nearby Finn class race course, Lemieux was then in second place in this the fifth of a seven race event and was given a good chance to win one of the medals. But still, Lemieux immediately took action, forgetting his own race and sailing toward Joseph Chan in the 470 class. As the Canadian was dragging Chan aboard, his own boat began filling with water. Successfully rescuing Chan, Lemieux immediately headed toward Shaw Her Siew, who was clinging tenaciously to his overturned boat. Lemieux performed the same rescue operation and now both Singapore sailors were in his boat. But for Lemieux victory was impossible. He waited for an official patrol boat to reach him, then transferred the two men. Lemieux then continued in his race, but the loss of time during the rescue operation put him out of contention. He finished 22nd in a race that started with 32 boats.

    Soon after the race, the story of the rescue reached the jury of the International Yacht Racing Union. They unanimously decided that Lemieux should be awarded second place for this, the position he was in when he went to the aid of the Singapore crew. None of the other contestants questioned the decision.

    Though Lemieux did not win a medal in the overall seven race competition, at the medal awards ceremony Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee, awarded Lemieux the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for Sportsmanship, and paid honour to Lemieux for his act.

    "By your sportsmanship, self-sacrifice and courage," said Samaranch, "you embody all that is right with the Olympic ideal."

    Lemieux has since retired from sailing and is now a coach.


    [edit] References
     
  11. Elliotte --
    With all due respect, hogwash.
    Chinese dissidents who "pressure" their governments are being disappeared. US athletes are already being gagged. The rightsholders aren't going to do damn-all. The focus on Darfur and on Tibet doesn't matter a dan. These people slaughtered thousands of their own people in T-Square in full view of the world and didn't even drop a stitch. They are wealthy authoritarians who hold the mortgage on America right now and they are impervious to outside criticism. Their economy is no a basket case, the way Russia's was in the 1980's before the wall fell.
     
  12. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    Amoral? Corrupt?
    Oh, please, do tell.
    Has the placement of the Games been corrupt? No question. Have participants occasionally cheated? Well sure, but if we shut 'em down for that we lose MLB, too.
    The Olympics are not what they could be precisely because people outside the Games look at them as a target opportunity to promote their own causes. It doesn't mean they should be silenced in the way it's been reported China has, but to blame the Games for the protests they engender seems a twisted bit of logic.
     
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