Neil McNicholas: Olympic excess overtakes true spirit of sport

YOU know how people decide to keep a pet because it's small and cute and easy to look after, but then, before they know it, it has grown to a size that they don't know what to do with it any more?
Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfellow win bronze during the Men's 10m synchronichised diving at the Rio Olympics, but should diving be included as a sport?Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfellow win bronze during the Men's 10m synchronichised diving at the Rio Olympics, but should diving be included as a sport?
Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfellow win bronze during the Men's 10m synchronichised diving at the Rio Olympics, but should diving be included as a sport?

It either gets donated to a zoo or “accidentally” released into the wild. The same thing has happened with the Olympic Games.

First there’s the opening ceremony. It wasn’t too long ago that the participating athletes marched into the stadium behind their national flag, the Olympic flame was lit, the anthem was sung, and then someone released a couple of boxes of doves and that was it.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Now each host nation is expected to spend a small fortune on an extravaganza that has to be bigger and better than anything that has gone before.

And none of it has got anything to do with the games themselves – it’s just a spectacular process of showing off.

To me, the Games themselves lost something of their kudos when professional athletes were allowed to take part.

We can watch them perform any time and we expect success from them because that’s what they are paid for.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But historically the Olympics were an opportunity for amateur sportsmen and women to show what they could do and what they could achieve through pure determination and grit, and they somehow seemed much more deserving of any medals they won precisely because that was their only reward and they had earned it.

This is why we abhor cheats. Every time the USSR or East Germany emerged from behind the Iron Curtain to compete in the Olympics, you didn’t have to be a cynic to suspect not everyone was competing on a level playing field so to speak – you just had to look at the 
shape and size of some of their athletes.

That’s why the world took the likes of gymnasts Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci to their hearts because they weren’t old enough or big enough to be performing on anything other than brilliance.

Sadly, the Olympic Games seem to become increasingly elitist with every Olympiad that comes around.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In 2020 baseball and softball will be included – which is fine for countries like the United States, Canada and Japan (which will be the host), but it leaves the majority of nations with little or no hope of medals in those sports. Maybe Great Britain should push for cricket to be included, or bingo, or binge-drinking?

When they introduced beach volleyball, didn’t that immediately discriminate against cold countries with no coastline?

Amazingly Team GB does participate in the sport, but it’s not one you see being played very much on the beach at Filey or South Shields – though you might if they’d let competitors wear fur coats rather than practically nothing, but then, of course, that’s what makes it a spectator sport!

Who decided synchronised swimming was a sport? Surely it’s just people wearing nose clips floating around in the water in time to music – which may take co-ordination, but it’s hardly a sport.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The same with giving medals to people who can dive into 
water without a splash – isn’t making a splash the whole point of diving into water? Maybe 
that’s what they should give the medals for – but it still wouldn’t be a sport.

Then there’s rhythmic gymnastics – dancing about with a piece of ribbon on a stick. And they give medals for that? And what about shooting? At least you have to throw a discus or a javelin, but all you do with a rifle is aim it, which, again, may take skill but is hardly a sport.

It’s the same with weightlifting – it’s a show of strength, but 
it’s just large people risking
doing themselves a mischief
and I’m not convinced that should be rewarded with a medal.

And really, shouldn’t the Olympics be about individuals competing against one another as in ancient times? There doesn’t seem to be the same personal achievement in 22 players scrapping it out on a football field, or even 14 in a rugby sevens match.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

So how does the IOC decide what qualifies as an Olympic sport? Why isn’t there ten-pin bowling, or snooker, or Australian football, or hurling, or caber tossing, or darts?

And I suppose there’s not much hope for tiddlywinks – the final would be a little difficult to stage in the centre circle of a 75,000 seater stadium.

The London Olympics and Paralympics are said to have cost nearly £9bn to stage – yes that’s a ‘b’ not an ‘m’. You could have bought an awful lot of tiddlywinks for that sort of money.

We have created a monster, an Olympic bubble needs popping before it grows even bigger. Perhaps the Games should go back to Athens, where and how they first began.

Neil McNicholas is a parish priest in Yarm.