Aren’t these Olympic Games exciting? They surely are, but can we talk about two unsettling aspects?
The first is the constant “medal count” comparisons, one nation against another. Yes, the individual athletes, as well as the athletes in swimming relays or rowing “eights,” are proud to be representing their countries. In fact, that was the point missed by the US men’s basketball “dream team” in 2004, according to many athletes. But the Olympic spirit is about individual achievements in sports, not occasions for nationalism, as if this were Berlin in 1936. While we like to see the Americans win, simply because we often know so little about the other competitors, we enjoy much more the excitement of competition, the grace of movement and the determination to excel.
We cheered for the Romanian woman winning the marathon, we smiled at the exuberance of the Jamaican sprinters and we shared the disappointment of the Brazilian gymnast missing his “dismount” after a spectacular floor exercise. There’s something inspiring about their training and their skills that is only sullied by reducing their efforts to a single point in some larger, meaningless tally. And anyway, wouldn’t it be more fair to consider how much bigger the U.S. and China are? Comparing medal totals on a per capita basis actually drops those huge countries to the bottom of the list (1 gold medal for every 12 million people in the U.S., as of press time, and 1 for every 30 million in China) and elevates smaller countries, like Australia (1 gold for every 1.9 million people) and Jamaica (1 gold for every 1.4 million). Sports is “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” as ABC used to say, not a jingoistic competition for coin.
The other unsettling thing? Skimpy outfits on the women. NBC even aired a short piece about the revealing “uniforms” in women’s beach volleyball, and the athletes acknowledged that they felt it was a major draw for spectators. Certainly, there is no reason for them based on the nature of the competition, as the men playing the very same game wear loose shorts and shirts. Yet the governing body (Federation Internationale de Volleyball) limits the women to bikinis or to a one-piece suit, which reportedly isn’t worn because it traps sand. Even the female swimmers and divers wear more modest suits.
Frankly, the beach volleyball uniforms for the women are nothing less than gratuitous nudity, and we thought (silly us!) that the modern world was beyond that. We appreciated seeing the marathon runner from Muslim Algeria, wearing shorts and a loose shirt while her competitors wore bikinis. Again, why do the women wear so little and the men in the same sport much more? Yes, we know that the Greek men competed naked in the ancient Olympic games, but there were no competitions for women at all, then. How much progress have we made, really, since 776 BC?
Can we mention a third thing we find unsettling? It’s this host country’s explicit emphasis on image at the expense of truth. We hope it’s not a uniquely American trait, but we do tend to seek and to prize the truth. Showing a computer-enhanced version of the fireworks at the opening ceremonies, and passing it off as the real thing, or having a prettier girl mouth the words sung by another – those planned fakes, for the sake of image, are unsettling. Now, maybe the Chinese somehow are being honest by admitting their dishonesty, but in our view, the ugly truth is ultimately more satisfying than the pretty lie.
So for 2010 in Vancouver and 2012 in London, we suggest, with apologies to Stephen Colbert, a small addition to the Olympic motto: “Citius, Altius, Fortius, Veritius,” meaning, of course, “swifter, higher, stronger, truthier.”
