The Idiocy of Olympic Values

Feb 3, 2014 Ian Buruma

It should surprise no one that the preparations for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, turned out to be wildly expensive and riddled with corruption. But the root of the problems in Sochi lies much deeper – with the supposed apolitical nature of sports.

NEW YORK – It should surprise no one that the preparations for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, turned out to be wildly expensive and riddled with corruption. But the scale of excess is nonetheless staggering. The cost of building ski slopes, ice rinks, roads, halls, and stadiums for winter sports in a subtropical Black Sea resort has been well over $50 billion. Critics say that half of this was either stolen or paid as kickbacks to President Vladimir Putin’s cronies, who just happened to win the biggest contracts.

One critic, a Russian businessman named Valery Morozov, claims that officials in Putin’s own office demanded payoffs for contracts. After being told that he would “be drowned in blood,” Morozov fled the country.

But what did anyone expect in a country where big business, organized crime, and politics so often coincide? And, the grand scale aside, Russia is hardly the only country where Olympic sports, Formula One racing (also to take place later this year in Sochi), or World Cup soccer is a boon for larceny and graft.

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Rik Rijs Feb 11, 2014

Have you noticed: Buruma is Always running after the facts. Each of his writings is about no-news. Read a few newspapers, looks what is most popular and writes an article about it. Never an eye opener for facts we don't know. Always forecasting the past. When will he write about what is looming and will surprise us. Say, an article about the Saoudi despots and their responsibilities in Syria, about the 40% of dirt poor and illiterate Saoudis who are fed up with their West-supported regime?
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Shana Davis Feb 6, 2014

It is telling about the critics as well that very few have bothered to mention the villagers who are now without safe water and must walk for hours each day to the nearest public transportation to get to work because their road was cut off - as a result of infrastructure "improvements" needed for the games. http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/12/29/russia-olympic-construction-devastates-sochi-village There appears to be "selective" vision in terms of human rights.
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Edward Ponderer Feb 5, 2014

Mr. Buruma has written an excellent and well-researched piece. I would add that if one looks to the ancient Greece of the original Olympics, with its class of slaves and where foreigners were "barbarians," one wonders why we should expect to seek some spirit of international brotherhood in it. The emphasis on physicality, particularly on the international level rather than intra-national, often represents to show national/racial "superiority" -- the better breed of the human animal, as it were. Ego contests do not lead to peace--the best to hope for is some sublimation of aggression.However, the issue of Gay rights in Russia is a seems whole different deal. There is a bigger picture here, and the power players are too big, too corporate, and too political, to real give a hoot about classical religious antagonism and popular prejudice towards, nor humanistic support for these rights. Simply put in coldest calculating terms, the Gay lifestyle implies a diminishing of population. Where this is advantageous there is government and media support. In the West, population decline is perceived by the elite as maintaining stability as workers become less and less needed and the calls by the half-nots for more stands as a real threat. On the other hand, Russia desperately needs population to exercise industrial and military power--and most assuredly to stave off the surrounding population threat as exemplified by the terrorists who ultimately count on a growing relative population to make use of what they hope to accomplish.But there is a common thread with the Olympics, and that is ego. The real problem is that in a globalizing world, such ego will block the flow of economic blood, overstretch the production belly while starving the leg and arm populations. In short, our true primary concern is human relations, but these will not be corrected by more egoistic displays like the Olympics, but rather the meeting of populations in round tables and the like, to try to establish some common fellowship--intelligently striving for an internalized sense of mutual responsibility. Certainly this is not accomplished at polished metal events in cities where heads are being beaten in in the back alleys out of the limelight.
- Rik Rijs Feb 11, 2014
 
 Well researched article? You must be kidding. What he writes has already been written months ago in hundreds of newspapers. It's old stuff. Sounds more like plagiat.
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Prasanna Srinivasan Feb 5, 2014

Mr Buruma, you criticism of how Mr Putin's govt has functioned may be valid on many counts. However, there is virtually no govt that is or has been above board on many such matters. When the late Baron put together the Olympics in 1896, participating countries ran tyrannical colonial regimes often with fairly oppressive regimes for their own citizens (women's voting, racist discrimination etc) including the US. The Olympics themselves in Ancient Greece discriminated on race (only the designated states with pure bred citizens), gender (no women) etc. So while the Baron's ideals were terrific, the original weren't even close to his ideals! Post WWII the Olympics became a Cold War front - state sponsored athletes being countered by eventually professional athletes in the 80s. What is true Olympian spirit is that all these athletes from around the world, as a microcosm of ordinary people everywhere, competed fairly and developed healthy respect and friendships straddling the chasms created by politics and regimes. There is no need to drag the Olympics into this beyond that as long as the participants continue to uphold the values in practice.
- Rik Rijs Feb 11, 2014
  
  The name is "de Coubertin", not Coubertin as Buruma writes. And Buruma won't like your comment that destroys his romantic view on de Coubertin. Certainly not when adding that de Coubertin saw the Olympics and competition sports also as a way to neutralize the growing unrest in poor working lower class. It was seen by de Coubertin and others as a strategy against social upheavel. A growing problem in those days.
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j. von Hettlingen Feb 5, 2014

Mr. Buruma's "idiocy of Olympic Values" ought to be seen as the loss of the Olympic soul. When the wily Baron Pierre de Coubertin decided to revive the Olympics in 1896, he had hoped that the Games would contribute to building a peaceful and better world. For him the Olympics was not about winning but taking part, and the essential thing in life was not about conquering but fighting well. It was decreed that only amateurs should be allowed to compete. Today, it is all about showing off, breaking records and generating revenues. Money corrupts and doping is not unconscionable, as long as one can get away with impunity.
Coubertin's original idea of an Olympics based on the three pillars of sport, art and education. By bringing sport and culture together and educating young people through sport, it was meant to promote mutual understanding, fair play and "international brotherhood".
Like the Ancient Greeks before him, the Frenchman insisted that mind, body and spirit could be celebrated by the modern games, a notion enshrined in the Olympics charter to this day. The goal of the Olympic Movement was well displayed by the logo of the five interlinking rings, which he designed. They represent the five continents and have been a symbol of the Games since 1914.
Before World War Two, the Olympic Games had been relatively uncontroversial. Since then politics had played a role, leaving sports in a vulnerable position. There are many who believe that sport and politics shouldn't mix. Yet much to their dismay, sport and politics do, indeed, mix. The Olympic history tells a story of boycotts, controversies and violence. By wrapping "itself in the lofty mantle of apolitical Olympic idiocy", the IOC has once again lost its sense of reality.
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Eric Nordin Feb 4, 2014

Mr. Buruma brings up many of the issues associated with events that include nation-states at various stages of development in terms of economic and political progress - the good, the bad, and the ugly have the opportunity to participate. Although the economic benefits from such events may be negligible for the host country (i.e. South Africa and Greece), when such events are done correctly, the gains concerning infrastructure improvement as well as marketing opportunities are palpable. The impetus of such worldwide events should not be focused on a power paradigm per se, rather (and perhaps this is my idiocy) it is a chance for interaction between individuals representing diverse nation-states who are not overtly concerned with proving their government’s polices, only with winner gold – determined through a fair, objective, and agreed upon matrix.
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