The reports of conditions in Sochi for the opening of the Winter Olympics -- such as unpaved streets, hotels with brown and black running water, lack of electricity and the like -- take me back to my own first and last visit to the Soviet Union in 1963 as a student of Russian language. There were similar problems to deal with then. It seems not much has changed.
I've increasingly come to believe that the constant addition of new ostensible "sports" makes a travesty of the original concept of the Olympic Games, which emphasized individual fitness, skill, and achievement. Team sports (except possibly those involving a team competing as individuals, like a relay race) don't belong. Sports that are more about form than function, like ice dancing, don't belong. Games whose winners cannot be determined except by points awarded by a panel of "judges" on a subjective basis, don't belong.
In fact the modern games have become an industry; their activities have more to do with jingoism and national pride than with athletics. The business of "hosting" the games has become very competitive. The winner gets to showcase a nation and a city perhaps, and to reap the windfall that comes from having a huge and very expensive conference come to town. That other competition (between athletes) has become less important over time, even while it has also become more commercial, and competitors radiate brand names and winners go home to reap big testimonial contracts.
The spectacle of selecting a different city every four years to host the Games seems hugely wasteful, as each host spends millions of dollars for facilities and infrastructure that are quickly outmoded and may have no other purpose. Double that because the world then goes through the same process to create the Winter Games in a different place every four years.
Why not establish a permanent home for the regular "summer" games? Greece might be a nice choice. As for the winter games, they may have a raison d'etre (on a smaller scale than now), but I did enjoy the tongue-halfway-in-cheek look at the legitimacy of the Winter Olympics published yesterday by Alexandra Petri.
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