Be still my foolish heart.
It goes without saying that sports’ greatest spectacle is rife with failure. But the Olympics go far beyond just winning and losing. With both their sheer stature and their structure, the Olympics present The LOSE with a veritable gold mine of storylines, as a fair amount of the worst aspects of human nature surface during the course of such single-minded pursuit of winning. Cheating, whining, swindling, politicking, corruption – the Olympics has it all. It simply gets no better (or worse, depending on your point of view).
Now, the over-the-air broadcasts will do their best to gloss over all of the seedy stuff, portraying the Olympics as a bastion of all the best that humanity has to offer – talent, sacrifice, dedication, tenacity, desire, commitment to excellence. All of which is true. The #1 reason that you should watch the Winter Olympics for the next couple of weeks – indeed, it’s pretty much the only reason – is that the athletes are incredible. Just incredible. They will do things which most of us can’t even imagine, much less attempt to do. They will showcase small facets of human potential nearly perfected, elevated to levels seemingly unfathomable only a few years ago. And that’s pretty awesome. Anyone doing something that well is worth my attention, even if I think the particular sport is stupid. I’m likely to think the sport is stupid no matter what, but I can certainly appreciate the toil and the effort required to reach the highest level.
And this is the Winter Olympics we’re talking about, of course, which means that not only are the Olympians incredible, but they’re all completely crazy. Everything in the Winter Olympics hurts. It’s all subject to harsh conditions which seem unnatural – most of us can barely walk on ice and snow – yet here are people strapping skis and blades to their feet, or climbing into various sledding contraptions, and they’re throwing themselves down hillsides or whooshing across a frozen plane. Failure in the Winter Olympics can hurt really badly, and no matter what happens, you wind up feeling cold. And if there is a sport in the Winter Olympics that seems sissy – let’s take the classical form of speed skating, for example, where two people race the clock and just make a series of left turns – the organizers just come up with a new variation specifically for crazy people – which is how you wind up with short track, which is speed skating mixed with demolition derby. (The LOSE appreciates speed skating, by the way, but the deviant in me always wonders what would happen if you surprised all the competitors and made them race in the opposite direction. They’d probably all fall down.)
This year, the Winter Olympics are taking place in a country synonymous with winter: Russia, where the winters are among the harshest of anywhere on the planet. The winter conditions in parts of that enormous nation boggle the mind. However, this isn’t exactly what comes to mind when you think of either a) a Russian winter, or b) a winter sports paradise:
Welcome to Sochi, which is a summer resort on the Black Sea.
In order to host a Winter Games, the Russian government has basically had to manufacture a ski industry in the nearby mountains, along with creating all of the infrastructure to link ski and sea together. The cost of this endeavour, all told, is estimated to be somewhere around $51,000,000,000. That is a lot of zeroes.
It could be argued that choosing such a location is a case of the Winter Olympics being a victim of its own success. (The cynic might say a victim of its own largesse. I’ll leave that for you to decide.) For years, the Winter Olympics was held in quaint little mountain hamlets like St. Moritz and Chamonix and Lake Placid, and was a cute little sideshow, a teaser for the grand summer spectacle that was the Summer Olympics which would happen later in the leap year.
But the International Olympic Committee made a decision to split off the Winter Games beginning in 1994, allowing them to become a show all to themselves. Since then, the games have grown really big, really fast, and all you have to do is look at a map to figure out where the problem lies. There just aren’t enough cities big enough in mountain locales to host this sort of event. The IOC now has to be creative when it comes to awarding the Winter Olympics, as the event is far too big for the mountain ski resorts of the world: Cortina d’Ampezzo and Garmisch have given away to Turin and Vancouver. Vancouver at least made some sense, given that the mountains basically run through the city (there are ski areas within the city limits of the suburbs) and the winter sports mecca of Whistler is an hour up the northerly road, but I’ve been caught in enough downpours in February in Vancouver to know that it ain’t exactly a winter wonderland. The choice of a summer resort on the Black Sea as the site of a winter sports festival requires the suspending of all disbelief, but the IOC has always been good in selling faerie tales, not to mention believing their own myths. (The 2018 games are centered on Pyeongchang, which is a cool looking area in the mountains of South Korea, but all of the ice events will take place down the hill in the coastal city of Gangneung. A cursory glance at the list of hopeful bidders for the 2022 Winter Olympics shows a few more creative acts of geography.)
The ways in which the Winter Games have grown are certainly ways that I approve of: adding more opportunities for women participants, which I am certainly in favour of, and also the further adding of legitimate forms of winter sports expression like snowboarding and freestyle skiing. But there’s a curious by-product of this move, which the IOC was well aware of in both of those cases: the United States now does well. Really well. (Some of the events were lifted right out of an American invention, the X Games, whose effect on the Olympics shouldn’t be discounted.) Consider that in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, U.S. athletes won a grand total of six medals. And 14 years later, at the new-look, younger, hipper Salt Lake City Games, U.S. athletes won 34. Some of that was due to home-field advantage, of course, as the home side usually excels, and some of it due to an emphasis on the Salt Lake City games by the USOC. But the IOC knew very well that to keep their winter event relevant, they needed the U.S. to be successful at it, because U.S. success translates into U.S. interest, which means good U.S. television ratings, which means continued flow of revenue through U.S. broadcast rights fees.
And there isn’t a greater example of biting the hand that feeds you than the IOC’s relationship with the United States, as it is wholly dependent upon American television revenue to continue their operations, and yet the IOC is one of the most decidedly anti-American bodies on the planet, possessing all the disdain for their primary clientele that the head of a cartel has for the flock of addicts keeping his smuggling operation afloat. We tune in regardless, simply because we love the competition. It’s theatre of the highest order. The drama of the event and the emotions it creates – both in victory and in defeat – is far greater than any drama we can script for a cinema or a stage. It is better than fiction.
And, on occasion, stranger than fiction.
The impact of that particular comedy of errors from 1994 on the Winter Olympics cannot be understated. Consider that 1994 was the first time the Winter Olympics were standing on their own. The U.S. sucks in the Winter Olympics. There isn’t even the same old enemies for Americans to hate, as the Berlin Wall has fallen and the Cold War is over. (And we’ll cover that point in a minute.) What’s interesting for an American in this event taking place in a snowy Norwegian village? Well, not much really … until figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, who is gorgeous and graceful and excels at one of the few winter events Americans actually do well at, gets whacked across the leg with a club and all signs point to the perpetrators being members of the entourage of one of her closest rivals, Tonya Harding. Well, hell, the Winter Olympics just became Must See TV with that single swing of a club! The ratings on CBS for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer promptly went through the roof, adding an ever greater sense of legitimacy to the whole event. And without that scandal, I would argue that the Winter Olympics wouldn’t be a fraction of the size that they are today. That scandal was the greatest gift the IOC could have ever hoped for. (There was even a nod to the old school, business-as-usual ways of the Olympics at the end of that Kerrigan-Harding bit, with Kerrigan settling for a silver in Lillehammer and losing out to Ukrainian/former Soviet Union skater Oksana Baiul through what appeared to be an act of bloc judging. It doesn’t really matter who I thought did/didn’t deserve to win. The whole point of bloc judging is that it doesn’t matter who deserves it. That was nicely done by the IOC, keeping it real like that while giving a tip of the cap to the past. But I'm getting political far too early in this blog, and this parenthetical is getting far too long, but I will also point out that I've actually been to the actual restaurant where the evil Nancy Kerrigan whacking plan was hatched, which is my only personal connection to this post.)
The IOC HQ in Lausanne is the most wretched hive of scum and villany this side of Mos Eisley. It's always been a haven for the best-dressed and most well-connected autocrats, scoundrels and scofflaws that the world has to offer up, all supposedly under the auspice of promoting (and zealously protecting) the Utopian Olympic ideals set forth by IOC founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Most of those ideas were myths, of course – the notion that Greek city-states all suspended wars for the purposes of sport is not true at all, and the notion of amateur athleticism (since mercifully disbanded) is that of an élite creating a realm and idle plaything all for itself, since the rich would have time for such leisurely activities while the working class were busting their asses in factories during the Industrial Revolution. And being a member of the IOC has always been a curiously good way to line one’s own pockets. The IOC somehow managed to spin its way out of further scrutiny in the wake of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal, when a large part of the argument put forth by those implicated in Utah was, in essence, that they were bribing IOC members because that was business as usual. It was what was necessary to land the games, and everybody else was doing it as well.
The new IOC president, Thomas Bach, recently made himself look stupid in calling out Barack Obama and a few other Western leaders who have shown their disliking of Russia’s anti-gay laws. He didn’t name names, of course, but everyone knows who he’s talking about. Bashing the U.S. has always been a popular pastime at the IOC, none of which should ever be taken with more than a grain of salt. My personal favourite IOC sniping at America for years came from the desk of Dick Pound, whose name I shall not joke of and who was head of the IOC spinoff World Anti-Doping Agency. He always loved taking the U.S. to task for lax policies when it comes to testing athletes for performance enhancing drugs. I will take the IOC seriously on that front after it goes back and retroactively strips EVERY SINGLE MEDAL that was ever won by an East German athlete. They’ve stripped medals before, after all (Marion Jones immediately comes to mind), and it’s not like there isn’t proof. There are entire warehouses full of documentation of a state-supported doping programme in East Germany. But making a principled statement of that sort would require far more courage than anyone at the IOC can ever muster.
The Olympic movement has always been particularly good at propping up dubious state-sponsored sport systems – and, indeed, one of the ways that state systems ultimately thrived (and continue to thrive) involves making enough alliances and getting enough people placed in influential positions so as to influence IOC policy and administration of the Games. It isn’t just enough to train/abuse/dope up athletes so that they will win medals on the field, because there is too much left up to chance once you take to the field of play – a place where everything is, in fact, complicated by the presence of the opponent. The state sports system is inherently an offshoot of the Ministry of Propaganda. Anything short of winning is unacceptable, since winning advances the aims of the state. It’s therefore important to also field a handful of corrupt officials and referees, and attempt to manipulate the games behind the scenes. There has been no better example of this than the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, the awarding of which was tantamount to handing the inmates the keys to the asylum. That event was already a mess, with the U.S.-led boycott on account of the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan earlier that year, but then you had blatant acts of upfront, out-in-the-open cheating such as this going on such as this, which makes a complete mockery of the whole idea that games have a purpose as a competition. (And, of course, one of the athletes most affected by that, Australian triple jumper Ian Campbell, went to Washington State, proving that not only can Cougars find ways to lose, but sometimes ways to lose can be found for them.) The event was clearly intended to be little more than a showpiece for the state sports system, a chance for the Soviet organizers to pat themselves on the back in front of a world audience – albeit one much smaller than originally intended. (Here is a fascinating piece on those 1980 games from George Plimpton.)
Now, The LOSE is not naïve. Athletes cheat in the West as well and always have, albeit on a personal need-to-cheat basis. Part of why anti-doping efforts are much harder in the West is that efforts at breaking the rules are usually undertaken by individuals rather than groups, and are much easier to hide in smaller numbers. But unlike in the West, where athletes make the choice to break the rules, those in places like East Germany didn’t necessarily have that choice to make. Here is a PBS documentary on East German doping. That it’s an episode of the show Secrets of the Dead tells you that it wasn’t all fun and games.
But I never have bought into that whole narrative put forth which surrounded the Olympics while I was growing up, which was our aw-shucks, gosh-and-golly American kids were venturing into hostile arenas armed only with their guile and wits while facing those colourless, soulless drones from behind the Eastern Bloc. That I didn’t buy it is saying something, in fact, since that is what everyone involved in the whole construct of the Olympics was selling for decades. Part of why the IOC has adopted a decidedly anti-American stance in recent years is that the movement, for it to be successful, needs enemies and villains and guys that wear the black hat. This flies in the face of the supposed anti-political stance of the Olympic movement, but the fact is that the entire concept of the Olympics only caught on because of the corresponding political back stories. No one cared that all much about the Olympics before 1936, when the Olympics in Berlin became a centerpiece of Nazi propaganda. (Watch this film sometime if you have the chance, as it is a truly remarkable piece of cinema years ahead of its time, political message be damned.) Once the Soviet Union and assorted Warsaw Pact entries began entering, the Olympics became yet another battleground in the Cold War. Every victory over the other guy was a triumph of ideology and way of life. If the Olympics was really not about politics, the athletes would not march in under flags and listen to national anthems on the awards podia. OF COURSE IT IS POLITICAL, and it always has been. The greatest threat to the Olympic movement, in fact, was a potential loss of interest after the Berlin Wall fell. Trying to figure out who was who in 1992 was ridiculous. (The Unified Team? What the hell is that?) Someone has to be the enemy, so it may as well be the baddest dudes on the block – which is the U.S., who wins all the time.
Athletes train and play to win. It is the only objective, in the end. For most of those who participate in the Olympics, the Games are the biggest competition in the world. They are, in reality, the only event that matters, for no other contests in their discipline – even World Championships – carry the same prestige and exposure. The set-up of the Olympics has always dictated not only winning, but doing so at all costs. And this is more true than ever now that the Cold War has fallen and the Olympics have become a 100%, full-on capitalistic venture. Pretty much everyone in the Winter Olympics makes nothing for their efforts and toil in obscurity for four years between games, save for some of the skiiers, the figure skaters and the NHL hockey players (who seem to embrace the Olympic spirit far more than just about anyone else, interestingly enough). Success at the Olympics can lead to fame and fortune otherwise unattainable – which simply intensifies the need to win, and which makes failure all the more of a bitter pill.
Sounds good to me.
Let the losing begin, and let all of the assorted responses to losing begin as well. Let there be controversy, protests, counter protests and everything else. It will happen. There will be whining and bickering and complaining, there will be allegations of foul play and bribery and graft, there will be people booing and protesting at the injustice of it all. It is all great stuff, wondrous stuff. The greater the stakes, the more personal the defeat, and the greater the indignation when it happens.
But again, it is all fun and games until something happens like what took place in Munich in 1972. That was a terrible Olympic games to begin with, what with the travesty of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. basketball final, the first appearances of doped out East German athletes who would come to dominate sports like women’s swimming, and a few other acts of lousy sportsmanship along the way, but the murder of athletes by terrorists showed the larger nature of the Olympics. The event does not take place in a buble. It is not just a sporting event and idle diversion for a couple of weeks. Sport is never free of politics. Nothing in this world is free of politics. A gathering such as the Olympics is the ideal place for those people who wish to call attention to their causes through violent means. We have learned the hard way in this country that nothing is safe and nothing sacred. Going into Sochi, there is legitimate worry that some sort of nutjob or another from the various insurgencies and counterinsurgencies running rampant through the areas of the old Soviet Union will decide to turn the Olympics into their own macabre theatre piece. From a distance, a security situation like that faced by F.C. Anzhi Makhcachkala seems bizarre and almost comic: “Due to armed conflict in Dagestan, the club's players live and train in a village near Moscow, at a training base previously used by Saturn Moscow. The club fly in for home matches which have a heavy security presence.” But it really isn’t a laughing matter at all. That such concerns exist at all should really trouble all of us.
And given all of the conditions at play, the awarding of these Olympics to Sochi seemed like a curious idea from the beginning, if an downright bad one. Then again, given how large and how costly the Winter Olympics have become to operate, it is something of a wonder anyone would bid to host the games at all. Vladimir Putin has viewed the Winter Olympics (and also the World Cup in 2018) as an international stamp of legitimacy for his government and what the ‘new Russia’ has/can/will accomplish. The cost of the games – $51,000,000,000 – is absolutely staggering, a sum larger than all previous Winter Olympics combined. The process has been rife with cost overruns and allegations of corruption, and early reports would seem to indicate that Sochi is still not quite ready on the eve of the event, there are security concerns of every sort, and the result of all of this is a collective sense of “why in the hell are we doing this?”
My hope is that Sochi pull this off, and that the Winter Olympics is memorable for the competition. I wonder, however, if this event actually leads to a gradual drawing down of the Winter Games, an event which seemed at one time like a wonderful little vacation like a ski getaway to the alps, but has become one very long, very strange, and very expensive trip.
So let us hope for everyone’s sake that is ALL I am writing about over the next couple of weeks is failure on the ice and snow. I declare open the Lose of the XXII Winter Olympic Games. Let the games begin!
And it would not be the Winter Olympics, of course, without the Norwegian curling team and their fabulous pants:
I gotta get me a pair of those.
