The Olympic Spirit
Sravisht Iyer
2/18/02
Back to the Columns
It has occurred to me that in all the recent months, I have posted no articles concerning the Olympics. I believe it is certainly a topic of great interest for me to discuss, as my beliefs concerning the Olympics seem to differ from much of the rest of the world. Personally, I do not believe in the greatness of the games, particularly the winter games. While the summer games have enjoyed a long history in the modern world (over a century, I believe), the winter games have been in existence for a relatively short period of time.
While the significance of the Olympics cannot be completely undermined, I do not believe that neither the Winter Olympics nor its summer counterpart deserve the media attention afforded to them. A peaceful gathering of several nations free from the mingling of politics and petty skirmishes is certainly a treat to see, but "the Olympic spirit" continues to elude me. The prestige of an Olympic gold medal is certainly high, but several sports regard their own trophies to be greater symbols of achievements. The Olympics do not grant a competitor the title of "world champion," indeed it is the events organized exclusively for their sport that provide greater validation for the athlete. These individual events are also gatherings of the international committee.
I view the Olympics as the multi-million dollar blockbuster. The TV flashes an ad every other second and all the talk around the water coolers on Monday focuses on the results and the medal standings. At the same time, however, there are several smaller "independent films" to further the analogy, around the world that draw far more critical adulation yet remain unseen. The Goodwill games are an example of such an event. Their name should imply a greater sense of gathering and togetherness than the Olympics, but they can only be found on cable. No newspaper publishes updated, running medal counts for the Goodwill games. The competitive fire does not burn brighter at the Olympics. Any world-class athlete trains for all events as the most prestigious in the world.
Why then, are the Olympics a great source of wonder and amazement? Why is the same press coverage not afforded to the Nobel Prize ceremonies or the Pulitzers? It is not a question of the intellect being snubbed, but the matter of one event being given undue attention and coverage. One may argue that the Summer Olympics are the only games of their kind that allow us to connect with our classical past and honor it. The Summer Olympics were begun upon the discovery of the Greek games by archaeologists and thus are indirectly based on their Greek counterparts. What particularly baffles, and to a degree annoys, me is the attention given to the winter games. Why is there so much air time devoted to a series of games that are scheduled at a different time and have nothing to do with the origin of the Olympics in the modern sense? It implies that the name Olympics slapped after any event is enough to draw public attention and draw throngs of media personalities.
Rename the Nobel Prize to the Science Olympics and the Pulitzers to the Writing Olympics and watch NBC shell out many more millions to guarantee exclusive broadcast privileges and the public is suddenly willing to spend the hours between 8-12 glued to the television set watching scientists lecture about their latest findings.