Olympics? Bah humbug!
Saturday, August 4, 2012 at 06:30AM
Few things succeed in arousing my (not very soundly sleeping) inner grumpy old woman than the Olympic Games.
On the front page of The Age earlier this week, Richard Hinds wrote about swimmer Emily Seebohm, ‘The pain is now so great she can’t imagine it will ever go away.’
Right. Has this young woman just lost a baby to SIDS? Been forced to leave her country in a leaky boat because if she stays she is likely to be tortured? Seen her entire family perish in gas chambers? Tried to recover from an abusive childhood? Fought the demons of severe mental illness? Lost a sibling to suicide?
Er, no. She has won the silver medal in the 100 metres backstroke in a world-class competition.
The point of this post is not to bag these young athletes who work so hard for so long with one goal in view and then miss achieving it by a fraction of a second. I am no stranger to disappointment – although not quite in the Olympic league – and find it one of the hardest emotions to deal with. The relentless rejection that most creative artists in Australia are familiar with can turn a resilient, dedicated and optimistic writer like me into a frustrated, resentful, jealous, sometimes even bitter person. Athletes aren’t the only ones who work for years to achieve something that may evade them forever.
My point is more that I simply do not get elite competitive sport. Surely the human race – and for all its disasters, it is a magnificent mixture of wonder, glory and the foulest and most spectacular cock-ups – can do better than this, can invent a more worthwhile pinnacle of success.
Some of my nearest and dearest are sports fanatics. I believe them when they explain to me how wonderful it feels and how good it is for humans to pit themselves against each other, to push themselves beyond what seems possible, that playing a team sport is one of life’s peak experiences.
The hype surrounding elite sports, however, means that young people who have performed almost super-human feats are made to feel a failure. This is the opposite of what any sensible parent tells their kid time after time. ‘Just do your best,’ we say. ‘The important thing is having a go.’
In competitive sport, somebody has to lose. So why, when our footy teams languish at the bottom of the ladder, do we react by sacking the coach? Why are our Olympics athletes miserable, with ‘pain so great [they] can’t imagine it will ever go away’ when they come anything other than first? There must be some way in which we can produce this effort and dedication without making the outcome so arbitrary and excluding. It’s horrible. It’s like the meanest kind of schoolyard.
There are other things about the Olympics that send my blood pressure through the roof. The money spent on pure spectacle. How many community arts programs and TAFE courses could you fund with what is spent on the opening ceremony?
The money spent, period. I’d rather money spent on sport than armaments, but only just. And don’t give me that soppy guff about nations coming together in harmony – crazy extravagance, drug scandals, vicious competition and cruel disappointment is more like it.
Okay, end of rant. This week I was planning a bucolic post about the start of spring in Melbourne, but the Olympics got to me. The start of spring will have to wait.
Reader Comments (6)
I agree! Although I LOVE my sport, and am really enjoying playing at a local level (community sporting clubs are wonderful things), I get so frustrated with Olympics saturation. My blood was boiling after a commentator recently said that the failure to win gold of the men's relay swimming team was "the greatest Australian tragedy since Gallipoli." Perspective is a wonderful thing...
I love watching the Olympics, and at the same time I loathe all this nonsense that you have described so very well, Clare. Getting a silver medal is a tragedy? Oh please! Thanks for your rant, you wonderfully grumpy old woman!
Very refreshing. For the first time ever I just can't bring myself to watch anything or read any articles in the paper about the Olympics. So much unnecessary anguish when there is so much pain & despair out there in the real world.
I'm an unashamed sports lover. And I think sport deserves every bit as much funding as the arts (which I also love). These Olympics have been a lesson to us, though, I will agree. To their credit, I think many journalists have tried to explore deeper than the "where are the gold medals?" thing. As for comparing Emily Seebohm's disappointment to, say, more challenging things than can occur in life - Emily is a young woman who has probably not encountered 'life' in its grittiness. Swimming has been her life so far - and she has battled illness to reach these Olympics. Let's not be too hard on her.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to spring too, although the southerlies are hitting our region - typical August!
Last week, the shock-horror news headlines on our nation's radio were deploring Australia's "failure" to win a gold medal when our athletes achieved silver. Today when a gold medal was achieved, it comes last in the news bulletin. I think our journalists (in general - I know there are exceptions) have a lot to answer for.
And the gold medal for best performance in the 'Knocking The Olympics' category goes to...
Please be upstanding for the gold medal winner's national anthem: 'Australians all let us sport/For we are young and free..'
SMH journalist Peter Fitzsimons has provided some decent perspectives about winning and losing.