They do it their way

The Olympic spirit

“The Paris Olympics closing ceremony on Sunday brought the 2024 Games to an end with a message about the importance of protecting the Olympic spirit in a world divided by conflict.” Thus a news bulletin in my inbox today from the editor of The Guardian. What emotions do you feel when you read what is by any account an anodyne statement of fact? The games closed. Yesterday. We have conflict. We want to protect the Olympic spirit. Hear, hear.

Hear what? First, what is the Olympic spirit? Come along, now, we’ve been glued to our tellies and hand-held devices for two weeks lapping up controversy after controversy, whether it’s the name of an island in the South China Sea, the sex of a person of changed gender or seeing denigration after denigration from a nation whose athletes can’t say where they’re from. Is that, then, the spirit that we must protect, or is the Olympic spirit something else that must protect us from precisely these shenanigans on the sidelines of a glittering and—only just—e-coli-free event?

The Olympic spirit is supposed to be encapsulated in two things: a motto of words, and a symbol of five interlocking rings. That’s it. The rings date from 1913, but are the brainchild of Baron Coubertin, who devised the modern Olympic Games. They first appeared in Antwerp, and no one colour represents any one continent. There is no suggestion to expand the number of rings given the identification of Antarctica as a separate continental land-mass, for instance.

The formerly three-, now four-, word motto is (for whatever reason) set down in Latin, for all Mount Olympus is a massif (not a single peak) situated in Greece: citius (faster), altius (higher), fortius (stronger). Snowboarding is not expressly covered, so maybe they will add cooler, although last year the International Olympic Committee added the word communiter, which means—we are told—together. We must not always believe what we are told, however, since communiter doesn’t mean together in any sense really: first, it’s an adverb, rather than being a comparative, like the other three, which spoils the cadence; it means of the community, communally, democratically or even in a commonplace manner. Together in Latin is in fact the word una. But, as you can see, it doesn’t end in -er. Still, it’s redolent of the English word unison, is where we get the French word une from, the words unify, union, unique—so, it hits the mark. The fact that the revision to the Olympic motto failed to hit the mark is nevertheless crassly symptomatic of what has become of the Olympic spirit today.

If we want to preserve the Olympic spirit, then we must expunge the money. While the Olympics need money in order to fund the construction of facilities and venues, there is a litany of white elephants that are strewn around former Olympic cities, which are under-used, abandoned, demolished or unsuccessfully repurposed (the Peking football team that uses the Bird’s Nest as its home ground draws weekly crowds of around 1,500). Every time the games get awarded to a new city, there is a frenzy of construction, slum clearance, burnishing and brandishing, at the end of which the flag gets handed over, a lot of highfalutin words are spoken, fireworks go off, and that was that for another four years (or two if you count the winter sports). This year at Paris saw sporting records tumbling, with criticism of the doping that gets indulged in. The East Germans doped like crazy back when, because they had to win. It was an edict from Erich Honecker, their president on high. When they got away with it, unscrupulous athletes started to twig that doping was simply a numbers game and since there is gambling on sports, why should there not be gambling within sports?

The Olympics were conceived as an amateur tournament and they have long since lost that distinctive feature that made them a sports event for everyman (if you want to know what together means). Throughout the rest of the schedule, fans can praise, laud and root for highly paid athletes who wow with their performances. And at the Olympics it’s now become more of the same. In the Olympic spirit, men and women come together at a pre-chosen venue and try to be faster, higher and stronger. Not together, but inter se, within their group. The Olympic spirit is to be the best, by fair means, honestly. To be both triumphant and gracious in victory; to be humble, and inspired, in defeat.

Some talk of establishing an Olympic centre or Olympic centres around the world where the games would always be held. Logically, that would be Greece; commercially, it would be Los Angeles, where the next games will be hosted and which hosted the 1984 games when no one else wanted to because of the costs. It was the last Olympics to turn a profit, because LA used its existing sports infrastructure, without much in the way of new build. But making Los Angeles a permanent Olympic venue could have a detrimental effect, the same way as its function as the centre for movies stymies creativity that doesn’t bring in the bucks: money would still be a major part of the Olympics: faster, higher, stronger, more profitable.

Were it possible to revert to amateur Olympics, that would be a step towards reestablishing the Olympic spirit. But one thing more would be needed: getting rid of the countries.

Russia’s athletes competed on a no-name basis this year, to punish their homeland for a war, whilst the IOC steered utterly clear of political controversy. Like its motto, the Olympics has bent into a Gordian knot its marriage to the idea of national Olympic committees, all seeking to be, well, the best: to carry home the most gold medals. Britain was way down the gold list, but came third in total medals. Clearly, Britain doesn’t, nor does anyone else, consider a bronze in the same light as gold.

I think that to be third-best isn’t bad. But countries don’t carry medals home. Athletes do. They wear them around their necks and these discs of metal clunk against their hearts. It is aberrant to have taken a tournament conceived on the basis of pitting virtue against virtue, men denuded even of their clothing to assure their equality of ability, and to now inject into it not just drugs from the medicine cabinet, but the funding of commerce and national governments, that those who compete and win should draw glory for themselves, basked in by the nation in which they were spawned. Inspiring as they sound, the words I am competing for my nation fills me with the same hesitation as I will die for my country. It is not the Olympic spirit to wave any flag at a games tournament. Flags are for battlefields.

The Olympics are a great concept and they tread, by their own failure to adhere to the spirit they now evoke with plaintive voice, a thin line of political correctness and international acceptability. They have been the subject of questions concerning corruption. They have revised their rules, even those at the core of their foundation, and, at times, forgotten where their roots lay. If they wish to preserve the spirit that spawned them, then they should look less to spin and excuse, and go back to the games’ origins. Back even before 1896.

Every games does it their way, and My Way was sung as a nod to Los Angeles and to Comme d’habitude. The first English version was actually not Frank Sinatra’s. It was written by a then little-known songwriter by the name of David Bowie. Next time, LA will be up; comme d’habitude.