The Olympics have ended? Good riddance. It was the worst, most un-Olympian, overcrowded, violated, professionalized and poorly reported and televised Olympics ever.
A few weeks before the Games I purchased an antenna for my old television to ensure better reception of NBC in my downtown Lansing apartment building. I decided to take time from my volunteer coaching of the Olympic Lifting Club team at MSU to watch much of my favorite athletic festival. Both my knowledge of the history and appreciation of Pier de Coubertin’s creation is, pardon me, Olympian.
Ever since I was a boy in Grand Rapids in 1948 when I avidly read of the athletic accomplishments of Bob Mathias in the decathlon, Harrison Dillard’s unexpected win in the 100-meter spring and the great John Davis who won the heavyweight gold in weightlifting - I have been a lover of this international festival of athletics.
In 1952 my interest in the Olympic Games - an unfortunate choice of words - intensified because I had become a weightlifter. Norbert Shemansky of Detroit won the gold medal in the newly created 198-pound class, which was created for heavyweights. Shemansky became my athlete model for the rest of my competitive career. He was to become America’s greatest and most athletic lifting champion as he acquired four medals - gold, silver and two bronze - the last at 40 years of age. In spite of the two bronze medals, relative to his body weight, he was better than the gold and silver winners.
I read several books on the history of both ancient and modern Olympics. I learned about the “core athletics” of the Olympiad: track and field - with 20-some events - boxing, gymnastics, swimming, weightlifting and wrestling.
Sometime in the ’60s when broadcasters began to cover the five-ringed festival, I noticed the chauvinism of the American reporting and television coverage. Stations rarely covered what they called the “minor sports,” unless an American figured in the medals, and usually little then. I wondered what basketball was doing in the Olympics. Were not the Olympics for individual athletes competing against other individuals in strenuous individual athletics? Yes, one man or woman, one sport or event and one medal - that was the original concept - no teams, fun and games.
In 1936 the first team sport put its pushy foot into the Olympic door. The Germans put on the most classical and culturally supported Olympiad up to that time. This happened partly because the German academics had great respect for the classic past - Theodor Mommsen, the historian of Rome, is the only historian ever to win a Nobel Prize for literature - but also because of and in spite of Adolf Hitler’s nationalism. The Nazis were masters of pomp and ceremony, as well as public relations. But the Germans overlooked America’s chauvinism when they diplomatically allowed basketball into the Olympics. Incredibly, the sport was played only in America, big mistake.
How do you award a gold medal to Jesse Owens for winning the 100-meter dash, or the long jump, then turn around and give away 10 to 12 gold medals to an entire basketball team? Or a better example, how does a Bruce Jenner or a Dan O’Brien feel about winning the 10-event decathlon, receiving one gold medal and then see gold medals handed out like cookies to an entire “bouncing ball” team?
Fortunately, for many of the Olympics during the ’50s and ’60s, few team sports were allowed into the great festival. But since the ’70s, the invasion of the fun and games sports has become an avalanche.
In 1992 torture of the Olympic ideal occurred when the Games allowed millionaire professional dribblers into the competition. I was horrified, ashamed to be an American. Professional American basketball players have millions of fans, an adoring press and fame and fortune. They did not need another venue for their glorification. Like the fictionalized Salieri in “Amadeus,” I began to have violent thoughts.
Given that there is nothing I, or you, can do in the near future about this violation of letting team games in, these millionaire hoop-stuffers performed a double injustice. They prevented a team of college players from having an Olympic experience. MSU’s NCAA champions, or a collection of college All-Americans, should have been the team to represent America.
The Olympiad has many sins and injustices, but space here can admit to only one more outrage. Tennis has rightly been reintroduced into the Olympiad. It is both individual and universal. But what are famous millionaires like Venus and Serena Williams doing there? They only prevented some deserving college amateurs from a day of glory to remember for the rest of their lives.
The Olympics are too big, too confusing, too violated, too professional and too frivolous - court and beach volleyball, synchronized swimming and diving? Spare me.
I commiserate with the real golden athletes such as the dignified Michael Johnson, golden-gal Marion Jones, sportsmanlike gymnast Aleksei Nemov, the surprise super heavyweight lifter and the astounding hero of the American wrestlers, Rulon Gardner, for upsetting the “unbeatable” Karyelin of Russia. These great athletes train and compete, mostly in obscurity, for four years, only to have much of their Olympic fire stolen from them by the profusion of team sport players and famous millionaires.
Let’s reform the Olympics. Keep the athletic individual sports, throw out the frivolous.
Charles Fraser, a State News guest columnist, can be reached through opinion@statenews.com.
