Passing On the Olympic Torch

I am not what you would call a sports junkie. I've never watched the Super Bowl, nor have I ever followed the NFL or CFL seasons, and any attention given to our national winter obsession has been spotty at best since the 1970s, when my father and I enjoyed Hockey Night in Canada together, cheering on the Leafs or the Canadiens (yes, I realize that sentence would make some locals in either city scream). When I picked up a racquet in the late 1980s, my love affair with tennis was cemented and I tuned in to all the Grand Slams; not only was it exciting to watch, but I think my game vastly improved by picking up pointers and strategies from the players. Wimbledon is the only tournament I still make an effort to catch these days, although I still have attending it and the US Open on my travel bucket list.

The only two constants in television sports viewing from childhood to middle age have been the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics. Soccer, as it's called here in North America, was a passion developed again from my father, whose lifelong love of the game in general and the German national team in particular seeped down to me and meant that we could sit together every two years (let's not forget the Euro Cup!) and cheer them on, usually pretty far into the championship, occasionally right to the end. Most of the time, he'd be cursing our Italian neighbours in what was a friendly rivalry between normally civil gentlemen. 

The Olympics are another grand global spectacle that I became fascinated with early on: I have a distinct memory of sitting in my uncle's house in Mauritius in 1976, squinting at the small television set to catch glimpses of track and field events taking place thousands of miles away back home in Montreal. From that summer onward, I was hooked. The winter version took a bit longer to get under my skin, but by the time Vancouver was hosting the 2010 games, the love affair was complete. The whole country was mesmerized, our athletes dominated the podium in a manner that was unheard of for this modest, underachieving nation, and our school ran parallel activities that made me so enthusiastic I was on a west coast schedule that almost killed me for seventeen days. It was the first time I went out and bought some memorabilia. My little Sumi and Quatchi keychains still make me smile, although not as much as the expression "I've got a bigger Quatchi" evokes, thanks to the inappropriate innuendo that comparing stuffed toy mascots seemed to bring out in my equally immature and close colleagues.

Fast forward to yesterday, and the opening ceremonies of the Sochi Olympics. We’ve all seen the recent stories and images in the media of the corruption, the tainted water, the latest and not-so-recent violations of human rights and subsequent demonstrations, and finally the rounding up and systematic hunting down of stray dogs.  All of it is ugly, brutal, and sadly unsurprising, and points to a country that has sunk deeply into dictatorship once again. Frankly, on a political level, it’s not much different from Beijing was except that Russia looks even more menacing in its wild west, uncontrolled manner. 

Free Pussy Riot photo from www.freewoodpost.com

From uk.eurosport.yahoo.com

Photo from michaelnassar.net

Photo from the dogingtonpost.com

So why is it that I can’t get excited about any of it if I managed to get addicted to the Beijing circus? Canada scored a record amount of medals in Vancouver, and many of the 221 athletes representing us seem poised to stand on the podium again. I keep hearing over and over from some of my friends that despite the house of horrors that is the Putin regime, we should ignore politics and support our athletes with cheers and encouragement.

I can’t do it. I don’t know what has changed for me in four years, but I can’t bring myself to turn on the television and get interested in any of it. My brain knows that the IOC is corrupt, and likely no more or less so than FIFA and its band of cronies, and that this has always been the case. Certainly, Toronto's experiences with a failed Olympic bid widened my eyes even more to the charade and lack of transparency involved in the process.  Perhaps it’s also that I hardly watch television anymore, or that the proliferation of social media and the endless 24-hour news cycle has made me an even bigger cynic and quite world-weary.  Maybe it's that I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that something will go horribly wrong in the next two weeks. I certainly don’t wish anyone harm, but my brain can’t help but envision that construction shortcuts were most certainly taken and that such corruption can sometimes lead to disaster. Add that to other serious threats (there was already a report of an attempted plane hijacking yesterday) and my decision has been made. Good luck, Team Canada, get out there and do your best, but I won’t be watching any of it. In fact, I'm going to take the opportunity to detach a bit from social media and give some much needed attention to other personal writing projects.

Yesterday, while the opening ceremonies droned on, I was busy at work ignoring it all, and I am relieved that the nine-hour time zone delay will make it easier to keep the circus off my radar for the duration. On this Saturday morning, as I wrote my first draft, I watched Liverpool FC destroy my beloved Gunners 5-1, and that humiliation seemed a much more pleasant alternative than tuning in to see how things were going in Sochi. I'd even almost prefer to watch the Azzurri defeat the Germans at a FIFA final. Almost.