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Stan Isaacs Games: |
Olympic Flame is Burning Low as 2000 Summer Games Open
(Stan Isaacs, the veteran sports columnist and editor, has covered the Olympic Games in person many times. Today he offers his reflections on the dark side of this much-ballyhooed international sports event as the 2000 Summer Games officially begin in Sydney, Australia. The Editors)
By
STAN ISAACS
for TheColumnists.com
The
Olympics were established by the French Baron de Courbetin with
a credo that now seems stunningly naïve.
De Coubertin said, "The most important thing in the Olympic
games is not to win, but to take part. Just as the most important
thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential
thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well."
Hah.
The truth is the Olympic Games today are a huge distortion of
sport for sport's sake. In fact, the Olympics have become the
great supermarket of sport. It is the most fertile of all sporting
grounds for the big bucksters. Sponsors, TV stations and marketing
people--and let us not forget some of the big name athletes--all
look to cash in on the Games. For many of the athletes in the
sports that garner the highest TV ratings, the emphasis on winning
is all-consuming. It used to be that participation in sports
was the hallmark of a healthy youth. Today athletes use drugs
to help them become winners.
Probably the most disheartening poll I ever heard about was the one that asked prospective Olympic athletes if they would be willing to use drugs that would help them win an Olympic gold medal, but which would mean they would not live to be 50 years old. More than 50 per cent responded they would take the drugs to win the medal.
The Olympics evolved into the private preserve of millionaires and officials of third-world countries on the make. The three P's--politics, profiteering, and professionalism--mark the Olympics. Bribery became one of the sports of cities vying to host the Olympics. This broke out into the open with the scandalous revelations about the payoffs by the Salt Lake City officials to bring the 2000 Winter Games to Utah.
This led to some house-cleaning by the International Olympic Committee, but it is questionable that the essence of the Olympics as an overblown commercial extravaganza has been altered. Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Olympic head who has overseen the expansion of the Olympics into the bloated monstrosity it is, has survived the assaults on his regime.
Despite the revelations about the bribery involved in awarding the Games to various cities, not enough was made of the fact that the Japanese fat-cat who led the successful effort to land the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano made a contribution of a few million dollars to help build the Olympic Museum in Lausanne Switzerland, one of the projects dearest to Samaranch. When is a bribe not a bribe?
The
scandals attendant upon the selection of Olympic sites was one
of the reasons Marty Glickman, a longtime Olympic booster who
was on the 1936 American sprint team, came to the conclusion
that "there's no point to the Games anymore except to sell
products. I predict they will last for only a few more Olympics
and die out."
One of the most uplifting and rewarding aspects of the Olympics
is the Olympic Village site that houses all the athletes. The
bigtime millionaire basketball and tennis players and some well-heeled
others who have become a part of the game often eschew the camaraderie
of the Olynmpic Village for more posh accomodations in hotels.
I recall Al Oerter, the great American discus thrower, telling
me in the Olympic Village at the Mexico City Games in 1968 that
he had more in common with say, a Czechoslovakian discus thrower
than an American sprinter on his own track squad. Athletes of
all sizes and shapes from all over the world rub shoulders in
the Olympic Village.
I used to think that the Olympics had been perverted only in the years that I covered them or followed them closely. I came to know better after some correspondence about the 1936 Games in Berlin with Bud Greenspan, the Olympic film man.
I first became an ardent adherent of the Olympics when I saw the two-part "Olympia," the much acclaimed documentary of the 1936 Games by Leni Riefenstahl, the esteemed German filmmaker. I saw it as part of a film series at the Modern Museum of Art when I was about 20. It is an exalting film, capturing the pageantry of the Olympics and the skill and artistry of the athletes. Riefenstahl trained her cameras on Jesse Owens and this played no small part in glorifying his achievement of winning four gold medals. I was captivated by the film and saw it a few more times over the years.
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Though German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl's film of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin glorified African-American gold medalist Jesse Owens (right) along with German athletes like shot putter Gisela Mauermayer, it didn't depict the anti-Semitism
present at the Berlin Olympics under Nazi Chancellor Adolph Hitler.
When I became the TV sports critic at Newsday I came to criticize Bud Greenspan for his approach to his Olympics films. Greenspan glorified the Olympics, virtually ignoring negative developments, particularly steering clear to a great degree of the commercialism, the gigantism and the drug scandals. I ridiculed Greenspan's view that "The Olympics were 90 per cent positive; I don't choose to deal with the 10 per cent negative."
I harped on his lack of journalistic accuracy so often, frequently citing the great work by Leni Riefenstahl, that Greenspan finally responded with a letter that jolted my whole approach to the Olympics.
He
wrote: "I share your feeling that Riefenstahl's film is
an artistic triumph against which all other Olympic films must
ultimately be measured. But Riefenstahl surely was not concerned
with telling the story of the 1936 Olympics from a journalistic
standpoint, as I believe your column implied. Had you been reviewing
"Olympia" in 1948, when it was first shown in the United
States, I would assume you might have addressed some of the following
questions to her:
. Why did the narrative ignore the fact that in January, 1936, seven months before the Berlin Games, the AAU voted not to send a team to the Olympics that year. This decision was reversed only after Avery Brundage, whose anti-Semitism was notorious, made a quick trip to Berlin to receive assurances that all athletes would be treated equally.
·
Why did she fake the torch relay from Mt. Olympus so that only
young blond
German actors and actresses were seen carrying the Olympic flame?
· Why did she ignore the feature stories in Nazi newspapers
that the United States was "being aided by members of the
Black Legion," reports which compared Jesse Owens' physical
structure with that of an ape?
· Why did she choose to disregard the announcement that
Jewish citizens of Germany would be permitted to remove the Star
of David from their clothes during the course of the Olympic
Games, but were ordered to replace the insignia immediately after
the closing ceremonies?
· Why was the soundtrack of the film altered so as to
disguise the boos and jeers which greeted the United States team
when it did not dip the flag to Hitler during the opening ceremonies?
· Why did she not mention that three token Jewish athletes
were placed on the German team when it was common knowledge that
they had been selected precisely because they would not cause
embarrassment by winning a medal?
Greenspan's
letter was a revelation for me, but not in a way he may have
intended. It only burst the idealized view I had about earlier
Olympics. I wrote that "my own reaction is that my early
reverence for the Olympic Games was influenced greatly by Riefenstahl's
film. I have become more disillusioned with the Olympics the
more I have been exposed to their excessees and hypocrisies.
The fact that my original idealized misconceptions were based
on a film that was often fraudulent emphasizes the need to present
truth rather than illusion."
The worst event I ever covered was the 1972 Olympic Games in
Munich. And not just because of the murder of the 11 Israeli
athletes by the Arab terrorists. The murders stand out as a permanent
blot on what the Germans had hoped would be "The Games of
Joy." Those Games were anything but that and no small part
of my disgust lay with the stupidity, boorishness and downright
soreheadedness of Americn losers.
It started with the debacle of the American sprinters who did
not show up for their trial heat race in time. Eddie Hart, Reynaud
Robinson and Robert Taylor won early heats in the 100-meter sprint
and were scheduled to participate in the quarter-finals. Their
coach, Stan Wright, working off an inoperative early Olympic
sprint schedule, got them to the track late, too late for Hart
and Robinson to compete, though just in time for Taylor's race,
and he qualified for the final.
Just about everybody but the American track coaches and the athletes
seemed to know the correct time for the race. It had been printed
in US Track and Field News two weeks earlier, in the International
Herald Tribune and Stars and Stripes posted outside
the track dormitory in the morning. The American track officials
infuriated just about everybody by not just coming out and admitting
they were at fault. They gave out this line of gobbledegook:
"The USA track and field team staff has conscientiously
made every effort to obtain all information from the proper source--the
Village information center. However, for some unexplainable reason,
information pertaining to the second round of heats in the 100
meters was not received and disseminated to the coaching staff
and an erroneous schedule was followed."
The "erroneous schedule" was a year-and-a-half old.
No other country failed to show up for the heats in time. As
liable as the coaches were, the athletes deserved little sympathy
for not paying attention to show up in time for the most important
race of their lives. A broken Wright said, "I am deeply
grieved for these boys." He took the mistake to the grave
with him. Hart said, "I don't blame anybody….I'll be
afraid to face my father."
Valery Borzov, the great Russian, won the 100-meter event easily.
The absence of Hart and Robinson tainted the victory, of course,
but Borzov had the logical answer, "I beat the men who were
there." It is the custom in track parlance to label the
winner of the Olympic 100-meters as "The Fastest Man in
the World." The Americans wouldn't concede that to Borzov
because of the freak absence of two top Americans.
Americans had another crack at Borzov in the 200-meter race,
not regarded as his best event. No matter. Borzov repeated his
100-meter efforts, winning all the heats easily and then beating
three Americans in the final. He was surely "The Pluperfect
Fastest Man in the World."
The Americans wouldn't admit that. Larry Black, who finished
second, said the Americans in the 200 were all affected by the
100-meter incident and weren't at their best in the 200. He said
Borzov hadn't set world records in his finals and had looked
back while winning those races. "What world class runner
would do that?" he bleated. He called Borzov a clown. On
hand was the legendary Jesse Owens, who had won both the 100
and 200-meters at Berlin in 1936. He had a different view of
Borzov.
"Sensational," he said. And when asked which runner
Borzov reminded him of, Owens said, "Me."
A few days later, after the Israeli tragedy, Vince Matthews and
Wayne Collett made fools of themselves after finishing one-two
in the 400-meters. Matthews and Collett slouched and chatted
on the victory stand during the playing of the Star Spangled
Banner, an action that was neither a protest or a non-protest.
Matthews said he did it because he was "unhappy." And
why was he unhappy? Because Track and Field News, the
bible of the sport, had picked him to finish sixth in the 400.
He said, "That is a slap in the face at me. I have more
ability than that." And he said he was unhappy because kids
like him from the east coast didn't have the advantage of the
athletes on the west coast where all the track action is. He
said he was not making a Black Power gesture like Tommie Smith
at the 1968 Mexico City Games. Did this make any sense? I have
never been able to figure it out.
I was dismayed as well by a black-white thing at these Games.
This was a far cry from the idealism of the Black Power protests
at Mexico City four years earlier. American blacks rooted for
Kenya's black Kikpchoge Keino over Jim Ryun, the white American.
There was some resentment by blacks against white heavyweight
Duane Bobick because he was getting much attention in the press--the
same attention black Olympic heavyweights like Floyd Patterson,
Joe Frazier and George Foreman had received. And there was glee
as well by some white track people when American sprinters failed
to
win early events, inspiring petty talk that finally this would
be a white Olympics.
Nor was it uplifting that in the aftermath of the Israeli tragedy
there were few Americans who showed up for the memorial service
in the Olympics Stadium and that only one black athlete, triple
jumper Art Walker, was present.
The US swimming officials matched the track people for buffoonery.
Rick DuMont, a 16-year-old Californian, won the 400-meter free-style
only to be disqualified for failing a urine drug test after the
race. He was penalized for taking the prescription drug Malax
which was illegal because it contained an amphetamine. It turned
out DuMont long had used the medicine because he suffered from
asthma and listed the special medication on his pre-Olympic entry
form. The American doctors, however, failed to clear the prescription
with the International Olympic Comittee. And no American officials
could be found who would admit that it was their fault in not
alerting DuMont to stay off the drug during the Olympics. An
international official said some American swimming official should
be punished, but none were. DuMont's stunned mother said, "But
he's been taking that medicine since he was a little boy."
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The
highest pitch of American hysteria was reached in basketball
as a result of the United States' first Olympic defeat ever.
This was the tumultuous 51-50 loss to the Soviet Union amidst
game-ending chaos. The United States, which has dominated basketball
since Prof. James Naismith put up a couple of peach baskets in
Springfield, went into the game with a 63-game winning streak.
Though the U.S. team clearly was superior to the Soviets, it
played badly on this night, making only 19 of 57 shots, and the
Soviets led through most of the game. The U.S. finally closed
the gap and took a 50-49 lead on two foul shots by Doug Collins
with only seconds remaining. When the Soviets inbounded the ball
from under the basket, the pass was deflected and time seemingly
ran out. The Americans celebrated and fans rushed onto the court.
Somehow, the game was not declared over. After much discussion
that nobody truly comprehended, an international basketball official
ruled that there were three seconds remaining in the game. Bedlam,
but the court was cleared and the game resumed.
This time the Soviets threw a long desperation pass downcourt
aimed at Aleksander Belov. The two Americans guarding him fell
down, Belov caught the pass and put in a layup for the basket
that gave the Soviets a 51-50 victory. American coach Hank Iba
blew his top, raging after officials, Americans all over the
arena cried foul.
There is little doubt that the two officals, one from Belgium
and the other from Brazil, had lost control of the game. The
Americans deserved to win. But basketball is an impossible game
to officiate. Frailty by basketball officials is almost an integral
part of the game. Just about everybody who has played the game
knows that. The Americans became vulnerable to officials' incompetence
when they allowed the game to be so close.
The Americans saw "communist conspiracy" rather than
the pitfalls of basketball officiating. They did not accept their
misfortune with any grace. They wailed, they cried. And they,
of course, made an official protest of the game. The press was
not allowed into the American dressing room for an extended period.
When finally admitted, we were met with rage and tears. An American
official said immediately that the U.S. would not accept the
second-place silver medal. With all the screw-ups and injustices
in officials' judging in the Olympics through the years, no individual
or team had ever refused a medal. But the Americans did. And
Collins put in his will that the silver medal should never be
accepted for him. The Americans' protest was disallowed, as are
most protests.
This inspired howls that the five-man jury was dominated by communist
states. The loss was irreversible even if it inspired the idiotic
statement by U.S. Olympic Committee head Clifford Buck that the
United States would suspend indefinitely any further participation
in Olympic basketball.
Americans back home raged as well, but to no avail. If ever any
group earned a gold medal for sore losing, it was the entire
U.S. basketball contingent. The P.S. to it all that infuriated
the chauvinists was the final standings: Soviets 50 gold medals
to the U.S. 33 and a 226-191 advantage in the unofficial point
totals.
The biggest blot on the Munich Games was, of course, the murder
of the Israelis. On Tuesday, Sept. 5, a group of Arab terrorists
scaled a fence into the Olympic Village, rushed the Israeli compound,
killed two of the 43 Israeli contingent of athletes and officials
and held nine hostage. They later were allowed to escort the
hostages to the airport in a helicopter where they hoped to move
on to an airplane that would take them out of Munich. The Israeli
policy ostensibly was never to negotiate with terrorists and
I was informed that they advised the German authorities not to
allow the Arabs to leave. The plan was to intersect the Arabs
on a plane filled with German security, but the Germans were
inept in their execution. The Arabs, sensing a trap, blew up
the helicopter and died with the nine Israelis.
I had been in the Olympic Village a few days earlier. I had had
a few quick conversations with Israeli athletes. I believe one
of them was a wrestler later killed by the terrorists. The world
reacted with horror to the event. So did I. But I did not comprehend
the actions of the Israeli government. I felt they should have
allowed the Arabs to escape if it meant saving the nine Israeli
lives. The Israeli claim that to give in to terrorists was to
encourage more terrorists seemed ridiculous. Terrorists are fanatics
who are not dissuaded from their mission. It turned out that
the Israelis have negotiated with terrorists in other incidents.
They did not this time and nine Israelis died. I was repelled
by this almost as much as I was by the fanatic terrorists.
There were many calls to cancel the Olympics. I had mixed feelings
about this. On the one hand, games didn't seem very important
in the wake of the tragedy. On the other, to call off the Olympics
was to give the terrorists a final victory. I was not particularly
happy that in this one instance I was in agreement with American
Olympic head Avery Brundage, who worshipped at the shrine of
the Olympic Games uber alles.
Even Brundage and his gang realized it was a little much that
the morning and afternoon competition continued the very moments
the Arabs were holding the Israelis hostage in the Olympic Village.
They called off Tuesday's evening events.
During the afternoon the television pictures showed the shadowy
head of a terrorist darting in and out of a window in the building
where the Palestinians were holding the hostages. I waited outside
one of the athletes' gates with other reporters and some Israeli
tourists. The strains of the theme from "Exodus" sounded
from somebody's portable radio. I winced at some of the racist
remarks about Arabs shouted by the Israelis. On German television
there was the vignette of the Israeli TV man and the German announcer.
The Israeli said,"It is a real shock."
The German said, "It is a real shock for me, too."
And the Israeli said, "But it is an Israeli who is dead."
The Olympic heads decided the Games would go on after a memorial
service to the Israelis. That service left a bad taste. It was
more of a show-business tribute staged like a Hollywood Bowl
spectacular. The grief-stricken Israelis were front row and center,
but more like extras in a cast of thousands. They straggled out
of the stadium to search for a bus and had to watch out they
didn't get knocked over by attendants officiously marshalling
limousines for the VIP mourners.
The low point was reached by Brundage, who hardly showed a shred
of concern for the Israelis. He was more dismayed that people
had dared interfere with his precious Olympic Games. He hurled
himself at the microphone, and with Olympian gall, paired the
struggle to keep Rhodesia out of the Games (a pre-Olympic controversy)
with the murder of the Israelis.
Ever
one to inflame troubled situations, he went on with a pronunciamento
dripping with hypocrisy. He said, "The Games must go on
and we must continue our efforts to keep them clean, pure and
honest and try to extend the sportsmanship of the athletic field
into other arenas."
He could say this in the midst of the petty wrangling between
and among nations and the lack of sportsmanship that inevitably
is as much a part of the Olympics as the medal ceremonies. Athletes
in several sports were disqualified for using drugs. Shooters
did not deny an indictment that many of them used tranquilizers
to steady their nerves. The Russian weightlifters were called
home in disgrace because they suffered upsets. Judges were dismissed
as incompetent or biased in a few sports. A Munich woman lodged
a civil suit against the coach of the Japanese women's volleyball
team because she saw him kick and punch his players during a
five-hour training session. A North Korean gold medal shooter
said he had won because he had heeded Premier Kim Il Sung's advice
"to aim as though shooting at your enemies."
I was not around for the final ceremonies, partly because of
what a press release said was planned for the finale. It said
it would include a farewell to Brundage speaking the traditional
words closing the Olympics after which "as Mr. Brundage
retires to the VIP stand, the words, 'Thank you, Mr. Brundage'
will appear on the scoreboards and the Armed Forces band will
play, 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.' "
The $650 billion "Games of Joy" had turned into one
of the greatest sporting debacles of all time. I wrote that the
Olympic rings stood for Terrorism, Fanaticism, Hypocrisy, Incompetence
and Arrogance.
Swimmer Mark Spitz was the dominant American at Munich, winning
a record seven gold medals. He did not particularly thrill me.
There was something artificial about him, accentuated by the
way coaches hovered around him, keeping him away from the press
for fear he would say somethng stupid. The press conference that
had been scheduled for him after he won the seven gold medals
took place in the midst of the Israeli hostage situation. As
a Jew it was a time for him to show a real face, talk with some
feeling about what was happening to the Israelis.
When asked how aware his American teammates were of the situation
(They were located only a few hundred yards from the terrorist
scene), he said, "No comment." More than a few of us
looked at him with some disgust when he was spirited out of the
press conference.
I was scheduled to write a long cover piece about the Olympics
for the Sunday sports section. I chose to write about the dreary
atmosphere, the general disgust and malaise about the Olympic
situation. To my dismay, one of the managing editors overseeing
the sports operation ordered a piece on Spitz. It didn't matter
that I was the sports editor at the time. It was a case of the
editors in the office overruling a man on the scene who had the
truest sense of the goings-on. They went for the cliché
approach of featuring the upbeat American hero rather than the
downer of gloom and doom that I was feeling.
I wrote the Spitz story. My atmosphere piece was truncated and
relegated to the back of the sports section.
Thanks to the telecasts of ABC in the United States, the star
of the 1972 Olympics was the petite Russian gymnast, Olga Korbut.
ABC, in addition to picking up the feed of the German television
people for the overall gymnastic competition, placed one of its
own cameras near the balance beam exercises. The ABC people quickly
became enraptured with the smile and charm of the diminutive
Korbut. American viewers were seeing close-up views of little
Ms. Korbut and taking her to their hearts. ABC knew it had a
good thing in Korbut and milked her appearances. So much so that
most people came to think she won an overall gold medal. Actually,
she won her gold medals in the balance beam and floor exercises.
Her countrywoman, Lyudmila Tourischeva, who did not have the
ABC cameras trained on her, won the overall gold medal.
Like most of the American reporters on the ground, I had little
awareness of the impact the gymnastics was having back home.
Gymnastics? Who paid attention to gymnastics when track and field,
boxing, swimming and basketball had always been the heart of
the Olympics?
This was the beginning of television determining the essence
of the Olympics. Sports that appealed to television viewers,
especially women, have become dominant. New sports that appealed
to the aesthetics of television and women viewers actually came
into being. The Olympics have become not what they were, but
what television made of them. As a result gymnastics during the
summer and figure skating during the winter games have become
the big ticket items in the telecasts of the Olympics. Events
have been added in those competititons, giving them increased
time on TV and higher ratings on the tube.
Gymnastics flourish though they are a form of child abuse for
young women. Girls are taken from their families at a young age
to train in distant cities under professional coaches, starved
in training so they can become proficient gymnasts in pursuit
of Olympic gold. Young women figure skaters also become almost
anorexic in heeding their coaches' instructions to slim down
so they'll look the part of champions.
Events such as rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming
have no resemblance to the Olympic motto of "Citius, Altius,
Fortius,"--swifter, higher, stronger. No matter, women like
to watch them, so they have TV appeal. Ice dancing is lovely
to look at, but it is dancing, by golly, not a sport. So it is
not a surprise that the ballroom dancing people want a place
on the Olympic roster. And why not? Can bridge and scrabble competitions
be far behind?
Are these the crabby complaints of a male chauvinist? Maybe. More likely it is criticism in keeping with a general disenchantment with the entire Olympic scheme. The Olympics have become so big, so bad, they have perverted the purpose and ideals that they would have us believe are at the heart of their existence.
© 2000 by Stan Isaacs. The photos and graphics are from the IMSI MasterClips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506
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