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Olympics will never be the same

by Tony Basilio

The passing of Ronald Reagan and the arrival of the 2004 Summer Olympics bring to mind what I consider the glory days of the modern Games—the Olympics of the Cold War. During the Cold War, and for much of the 20th century, the Olympics were a way for us to measure our progress against that of the world, and our enemies in particular.

Now that our enemies are united more by religious and cultural ideology than by political and national affiliation, it’s enough to make me yearn for the former U.S.S.R. and the looming specter of the Evil Empire. At least for this month, anyway.

Here in the 21st century, the Olympics have devolved into little more than hype for its own sake. The formula for a typical Olympic broadcast is as predictable as the weather in Hades: quick event; tearjerker story; analysis of the tearjerker story; four minutes of commercials; tearjerker story. Then Bob Costas tells a joke.

All of which wouldn’t be so nauseating if the events themselves had any sex appeal. But the competition now is mostly anti-climatic.

Gone are the days of the Soviet Empire and other communist strongholds like East Germany and Romania. What American sports fan didn’t thrill to the spectacle of our fresh-faced kids taking on monsters from the Eastern Bloc, women who looked like men, and men who looked like beasts? Nowadays, German women actually look like...women. Where’s the fun in that?

Consider the case of 75-year-old Lothar Kipke, the former chief doctor of East Germany’s swimming team who was convicted in 2000 of giving performance-enhancing drugs to several young East German athletes without telling them. It’s sick, but it sure made for some compelling competition! You knew that our kids were opposing human thoroughbreds, chemically enhanced professionals who did little else but train.

Remember those Romanian gymnasts? How about the Russian weightlifters? Or the boxers of Cuba, monster punchers like the great heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson? Only one man survived three rounds against the Cuban giant in three Olympics; he knocked out nearly every Joe, Igor and Hans thrown his way until retiring after the 1980 games. Stevenson was the flexed muscle of Fidel Castro on the world stage.

But the paradigm has shifted. Uncle Sam is now the Evil Empire, as the United States sends professional athletes from nearly every sport to the Olympic spectacle. And the thrill is gone. Who wants to watch NBA players hammer the Angolan national basketball team into the ground? Give me the days of Munich ’72 when a clock malfunction allowed the Soviets three attempts to defeat the U.S. in the gold medal basketball game. Can’t you still see that stunned look on the face of a young Doug Collins as victory was snatched away? It hurt so much that we couldn’t stop watching.

Imagine the Miracle on Ice of 1980 in today’s terms. A group of kids, babies in the world of hockey, somehow defeated the vaunted Soviets at Lake Placid, the same Soviet team who months earlier hammered NHL teams on a whirlwind tour through the league. Our kids had no reason to think they could play on the same ice as those robotic goons. Yet they defied the odds and gave our country perhaps its most enduring sports memory.

Under the current Olympic system—which essentially boils down to our professional athletes versus the professional athletes from the rest of the planet—no such drama exists, nor is it even possible. Heck, most members of the current Russian men’s hockey team are probably under contract to the NHL.

So once again, the Olympics are here. But why should anyone care? It may be in bad taste, but I’m tempted to borrow and corrupt those words first immortalized by our recently deceased former president: “Mr. Yeltsin, please re-erect the wall.”

July 8, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 28 © 2004 Metro Pulse