The first ever Youth Olympic Games in Singapore has already become a political football field. Singapore 2010, the latest in an array of Olympic business ventures disguised as quests for excellence in sport, got underway this weekend. Already, the political wars that rage outside athletic competition have left a mark on even youth competition.
Singapore 2010 is supposed to be an expansion of the Olympic ideal into the world of the very young athletes of the world. “Supposed to be” being about as close as any IOC led event will ever get in the near future. And, as in other Olympic events Singapore has become a political sounding board as much as an athletic one with the Israeli – Iran boys taekwondo controversy.
Israel claims Iran’s Mohammad Soleimani dumped the gold for political reasons – Iran says injury was the cause – Israel won – so what’s the problem? Just like Israel has to squeeze every drop of value out of news, the IOC now seems determined to sop up every penny that can possibly be spent on sports associated with the 5 rings. Not to sound too cynical, but the IOC fairly branded itself “devoid of honor” during the Nodar Kumaritashvili debacle in Vancouver. Just how anyone can expect good to come from the endeavors of businessmen and aristocrats such as these is beyond this writer.
IOC President Jacques Rogge, Singapore Prime Minister Lee, and Singapore’s billionaire IOC connection Ng Ser Miang of course practiced the official “back slapping” ceremonies on Saturday – but is Singapore 2010 really about athletic pursuit, or a test case for something like “Monday Night Olympics” – as sports soap opera for the IOC? This is how it seems to me. Reading the hype and rhetoric of these people, in the wake of their dastardly treatment of Kumaritashvili, is actually quite sickening. A Winnipeg Free Press article reflects this false IOC dogma via the words of Olympic historian John MacAloon:
“Clearly the Youth Olympics is a tacit acknowledgment by the IOC that the conventional Olympics have lost their contact with Olympic philosophy, which is about inter-culture encounter, detente and human rights.”
Clearly the IOC, VANOC, the FIL and a hundred Olympic officials or more could have reflected a “redirection” back to Olympic ideals with correct action over Nodar – but they did not. They never apologized, and left Nodar’s Olympic legacy right where they put it originally – on that Georgian luger’s departed shoulders – a travesty of Olympic proportions. Enter a new era of Olympic entrepreneurial energy – the youth of the world superimposed over real estate dealings, hotel bookings, transportation infrastructures, and construction contracts. Singapore 2010.
In a perfect world, people could believe in the power of individual excellence that once powered the Olympics. For a space in time, every 4 years, the world once came together in celebration of human excellence – and then something changed. Or more appropriately perhaps, accelerated.
Greed and the monetization of human individual character – universal character – became a highly profitable commodity (or more profitable). We evidently need to increase production now – basically turn the youth of the world into sports profitability child laborers. A cynical view I know, but try and find one IOC key member without some business interest. Phil out for now.
Featured image courtesy Singapore 2010.
John Furlong, Jacques Rogge, Stephen Urquhart and Alexander Popov in Omega bobsleigh Vancouver
About Phil Butler
