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Roger Rabbits with |
Toot toot, wave wave, bye bye! I’m about to jump aboard the great International Olympic gravy train. With luck, and a lick of cunning, you may see me in LAX in ‘28 presenting a medal for one of those frivolous “sports” that are now part of the Olympic stable.
Like breakdancing. Wasn’t it a nonsense that Aussie breaker “Raygun” and her sad, no-points party tricks could share the Olympic stage with the fastest man on earth? Or the fastest woman on earth; the world’s greatest athletes?
The Aussies tried to fudge it of course – good on Raygun, they said. But Raygun and her breaking should not have been there in the first place. They won’t be in the 2028 Games. It didn’t feel a good fit for the Olympics. The same might be said for surfing and sport climbing and skateboarding and handball.
Poetry perhaps?
But there is a good case for poetry to become an Olympic discipline... again. Yep, poetry. And there’s a precedent – the father of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, won a gold medal for literature at the 1912 Summer Olympics with his poem Ode to Sport.
There’s a purity, a nobility, a virtue about the Olympic Games that shouldn’t be sullied by tacky commercial imperatives. And poetry. The International Olympic Committee introduced breaking to the Olympic schedule to appeal to a younger audience, to add “urban flair”. You could wager an entree of escargots à la bourguinonne that breaking is not what Pierre de Coubertin had in mind. Non! Non! Non!
After all, this was a man who was fiercely opposed to woman taking part in Olympic track and field events. So breaking et al wouldn’t have stood a chance.
The IOC is always on the lookout for saleable product, new sports, hobbies to add to the stable. So if I could convince the IOC they could turn a dollar from sports like gumboot throwing, zorb racing, cat culling or speed fencing, I might get a ticket to Los Angeles.
Faster, higher, stronger, RICHER
I have just four years to ingratiate myself with the IOC, four years to join the old boys’ club so I am invited to Los Angeles. I am not driven by the noble Olympic ethos “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. I am in it for me. And I would be making some good coin.
According to ‘Time’ magazine, IOC members travel first-class to Olympic events. The IOC stays in five-star hotels – not the cold, hard, no-sex cardboard beds the stars of the show endured in the athletes’ villages of Paris. IOC members are also paid about US$900 ($1461) each day they attend an Olympic event. That’s a lot of pommes frites and pain au chocolats.
But the IOC can afford it. It generates about US$8 billion each Olympic cycle. So the Olympic motto should really read: “Faster Higher, Stronger, RICHER!”
But those going higher, faster and stronger – the people you and I love to watch – I believe don’t earn a cent from the IOC. How does that work, IOC? We are going to hold a massive rock concert but we won’t pay the stars that perform and make it happen?
The IOC is reported to have told news agencies it was not “the role of an international sports federation” to provide payments to athletes “for Olympic success”.
Research shows 46% of athletes survive off less than $15,000 a year, so it might be time for a more equitable disbursement of the IOC lolly jar.
A gob-full
While I am waiting for Los Angeles, here are a couple of my own gourmet takeaways from Paris.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo should have won gold for her arrogance. I’ve always enjoyed arrogance when it’s served with a side salad of justification. And so it was with Hidalgo. When a few Christians and right-wingers like D.J. Trump dared criticise the opening ceremony, she didn’t wait for her PR machine to tell the world she was right, reasoned and justified. She gave the critics a gob-full.
“[Bleep] the reactionaries, [bleep] the far right, [bleep] all of those who would like to lock us into a war, or all against all.” All on record.
Then the side salad. “Paris is the city of all freedoms, the city of refuge for LGBTQI+ people, the city where people live together.” A bold and brash statement for inclusion and hope.
Then the delightful, and eye-watering, story of the French pole vaulter who was undone by his manhood when his “bulge” dislodged the bar at 5.7 metres. However, there is good after bad because an adult website made him a $250,000 “show all” offer.