The Olympics are over. The five ringed circus which captivates most of the world is pulling up stumps and sending it’s advance party to Tokyo, the scene of it’s next orgy of sport, drama and corruption in 2020.
I used to get worked up about the Games and while I still watch a bit of it the cynic in me takes over nowadays and I wonder if the the Olympic movement has outlived it’s usefulness and purpose. Nothing lasts forever-not the strongest empires nor the hardiest of hearts. Why should the Olympic Games be any different?
Olympic ideals were shredded long, long ago and it seems that we tie our national self worth up in a bundle with Australian pride and measure it in the amount of gold medals we win. Not silver, not bronze. Gold, gold, gold.
We are not the only nation which does this although I think sport is hardly as important today in the Australian psyche as it was even twenty years ago. But eight Australian Olympic champions is apparently too few as far as the powers that be are concerned;too much money has been spent for too little return. Sports funding will be looked at. Heads are on the chopping block. Our natural sporting enemy-the Brits-have become a an international sporting powerhouse and those pesky little Kiwis crept up on us on the medal table and had their best ever haul. Australians are seen by our greatest rivals as sportingly inept. The Wallabies are a national joke. The cricketers were whitewashed in Sri Lanka. Quick! Declare an emergency! Let’s rip money off health, school and infrastructure spending and channel it into our national sporting teams. Maybe, if we gear our national strategy towards “total sport” and put our economy on a war footing, all taxes being committed towards the prosecution of sporting excellence then perhaps our national pride can be restored. Who needs schools or roads? Let sick people die. We only need the strongest, the fittest, the fastest in our new Orwellian Australia. But, was it really that bad?
Australia finished about tenth on the medal table with 29 medals, 8 of them gold. This was far short of what the Australian Olympic Committee predicted or expected but you take a few hits at the Games. A couple of close and unlucky quarter-final losses put out some of our teams who were expected to do well and some of our swimmers didn’t perform as well as hoped in their pet events. Our cycling program was a disaster but I predicted it would be but all the nations which finished above us have populations far larger than Australia’s and of comparable nations only Holland can be mentioned in the same breath in terms of success although we beat them too.
New Zealand did very well with 18 medals, five of them gold and are telling all and sundry that per capita, they are the greatest sporting nation on earth. Cringe inducing yet not unlike the self-conscious Australia of twenty years ago.
Of course the key to all this is money. Money buys you sporting expertise, scientific training and medical procedures which other countries can’t afford or aren’t willing to pay for. Britain finished second on the medal table, only the United States being superior and ahead of China-their national lottery system which pays for sport in the United Kingdom proving it’s worth in the wake of being got up for the 2012 London Games. Best of luck to them. If they want to spend that sort of cash for two weeks of national pride every four years then more power to them. But I’m content with the way we have gone even if there has been some disappointment.
I’m happy with the amount of investment we are putting into sport and if that equates to us “only” finishing tenth on the medal tally at the Games then so be it. If we are forced to take slings and arrows from the Brits and Kiwis for our perceived failings in sport then let them come. We still live in a great nation.
I would rather investment in things which really matter. Art and science. Innovation and technology. Let Australia be among the world’s best in these things. Let’s sharpen minds as well as bodies. And let’s not stake our national self-worth on a sporting orgy of dubious authenticity and relevance.
Enjoy the Olympics by all means but remember-it’s only a game.
Have a nice day.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 