by The Rebel 11 Replies latest jw friends
" The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but take part"
Yet according to the Daily Mail, The entire Russian Olympic team will today be banned from competing at the Rio Games next month as punishment for their country's state sponsored doping programme. It therefore seems to me the Olympics has become associated with doping & drugs, and politics becoming an integral part of the games.
Do you think that the 2016 Olympcs can still unite countries in a positive way?
The Rebel.
The Olympics has been used as a political toy for many years - remember the US and Russian Olympic boycotts of the 80's (?)
Athletics has been used as a state sponsored propaganda machine for ideologies.
Real amateur sport and the spirit of true competition died a long time ago. Ironic that in the past some people have been banned for being given bus fair to get to the games and now we have professional multi-millionaire sportspeople taking part.
And golf, what the heck ???
And don`t forget the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin Germany ,that was supposed to show the world who the Master Race was .
smiddy
Jaydee :- I love the way you have dipicted the Olympic Rings as representing money. So do you think the Olympics are a waste of time and money? ( The rings are supposed to represent the five inhabited continents of the world, united by Olympism)
Anyway personally I have concluded that sadly politics is an inevitable part of the games, doping, drugs and the like will take place, and some of the judges I suspect in individual competitions may be corrupt. On the positive I believe for many individual athelites the Olympics, are about competing to the best of their ability and hopefully winnng a medal.
The Rebel.
Breaking News, the daily mail got it wrong and Russia will be allowed to send a team to Brazil. So to clarify:-State dopping is OK and dopping has pretty much been authorized by the IOC. So much for a clean Olympics. Let's just get rid of the Olympis.
The Rebel.
The Olympics are a HUGE financial drain on the host city. They have to build housing, places for the events, and other facilities. They must meet the absurd requirements of the IOC. Then these facilities are then mostly abandoned and never used again.
The city might get at short term infusion of cash from the tourism during the Olympics, but that's it. Billions spent and wasted.
The real winners are the advertisers. They get to brand their products and brag about it. And while they do donate, they also get the boost to sales which hopefully carries them to increased sales beyond the Olympics.
There's also the television revenue. Why don't the networks, when televising the Olympics, donate all of the profits towards the Olympics? Whether it's building training facilities or even going towards a fund to help the next city.
The Olympics don't interest me one bit. Summer or winter. Don't care. Luckily now, when I want to watch something, there are all sorts of alternatives from streaming to home video that I'm not stuck running across it anymore. I'm just not that much of a competition junkie to watch people I've almost never heard of competing. And who I'll likely never see compete again. Not to mention in sports who's finer points and rules I don't even understand. A race, maybe. But anything with a judge is not, in my opinion, a sport anyway.
corruption ... bribery ... cheating ...
may the best chemists win......
almost as bad as FIFA.............
Maybe it's just me but I'm finding the Olympics less and less interesting and exciting. There's the cheating obviously but also the financial corruption and harm it causes to the people who live there.
There's also the fact that it's been proven that you can buy medals. Not by cheating, but there is a direct correlation between how much a country puts into sports funding and how many medals they get.
It just seems to have lost the core ideals it was supposed to be founded on. Amateur Athletics.
Who cares that "Visa is accepted" at the games. Sheesh.
