Thoughts on the Olympics
The Olympics have always been my favorite sporting event because it brings together athletes from all over the world to compete in a myriad of different sports. I suppose my favorites are the marathon and the short sprints and hurdles because they capture pure athletic excellence at such radically poles. I have also loved the unfathomable skills and incredible feats of the gymnasts and the divers.
I did not like the idea of bringing the greatest athletes from all over the world to Japan in the middle of a pandemic and then sending them all back to their home countries; this could have been a gigantic super spreader event all over the world. It appears as if they pulled it off, but we will know better in a few weeks or a month.
I also did not like holding the outdoor events in the excessive heat of a Tokyo summer. If it could be delayed for a year, then why not delay it for a few more months ‘til the weather cools off. Why subject the world’s extraordinary athletes to the potential of heatstroke? Several ended up in wheelchairs at the end of their runs.
I wondered about including great team sports like baseball when they are only played at a high level (or at all) in a relatively few nations. I also wondered about including those most elite and expensive sports like dressage or sailing – that require an investment of financial resources so far beyond the reach of average families.
While the modern Olympics were initially conceived as a pure and amateur competition between individuals, it has devolved into a show of excessive nationalist pride between nations willing to devote vast financial resources to developing and displaying the excellence of their athletes. Why should we care whether Russia, the US or China amasses the most medals? We do and should care about individuals like Simone Biles who captures the essence of excellence and Olympic spirit matched to understandable human frailty, or Allyson Felix, winning the most track medals at 35 years of age, or the glorious sportsmanship shown by the Qatari and Italian high jumpers. I was also thrilled at the mixed nation victors in the 100 yard dash (Lamont Jacobs for Italy, American dad and Italian mom) and the pole vault (Armand Duplantis for Sweden, American dad and Swedish mom). To me, their back stories capture the universal, peaceful and loving nature of the event. I was moved by the political and moral leadership of athletes from the US to Belarus and the enormous support they received all over the world. I wondered whether their courage will inspire little girls and boys to merge their pursuits of excellence with compassion and empathy for all the less advantaged and less fortunate living in our diverse societies.
When I was a teenager, I was invited to join my Italian cousins in Rome for the 1960 Olympics, but I was too timid to travel so far away from my Midwest home and family to a nation where I spoke or understood not a single word of Italian (Latin yes, Italian no). In the LA Olympics Marathon of 1984, Joan Benoit Samuelson ran right past our tiny walkway while we cheered her on “Go Joanie, go Bowdoin, go Maine”. There was no other runner in sight behind her. In 2028, the Olympics will be in LA again, I am hoping to be alive and there.