TITLE: The Olympic Games Are Due Into London Next Year, But Will They Really Live Up To Their Promise Or Will The Unsavoury Side Of Sport Spoil The Party

I’ve loved watching sport since I was a child, having been encouraged to watch football by my neighbour when I was approximately eight years old. John was lucky enough to get a ticket for the F.A. Cup Final one time, and I, with childish innocence, spent the afternoon watching the match on a television screen in the hope that I would be able to locate him in the crowd. Needless to say, I didn’t notice him, but I had got hooked by the spectacle of the big match. In my teens I evolved into a dedicated football fan, with the match round-up at five o’clock|5pm|tea-time on a Saturday afternoon impacting on my mood for the rest of the weekend. Fortuitously for my family, I followed a club who won more often than they lost!

Over the years, I began to watch a lot of other sports on television. Test cricket was soon a firm favourite when an attack of glandular fever left me shut away at home during a series in the West Indies, snooker was dragged from the pubs and clubs of the UK and turned into primetime viewing via some inventive marketing and the realisation that this was a game that was comparatively cheap and easy to televise. And then there was the Olympic Games, a stunning sporting spectacle which took place every four years and in which all the world participated on the same terms. Or so we were told.

Given that my earliest recall of anything connected with the Olympics was the tragic events which happened in Munich in 1972, it’s possibly surprising that I embraced the whole notion of the event so much. But those same games also produced Mark Spitz’s incredible collection of seven gold medals in the swimming pool – an achievement only bettered thirty-six years later by Michael Phelps. Days and days of watching Communist regime athletes effortlessly outperforming everyone else due to performance enhancing drugs which were not identified didn’t dull my enthusiasm either, and I have avidly watched as much television footage as I have been able to over the years – until now. (Is it any wonder that I now have to wear glasses to see properly and am saving up for Laser eye surgery? Too many hours spent watching sport on television!)

No matter how much I try, I’m finding it a problem to get any enthusiasm for the London Games. Even relations who usually don’t like sport think that they’d rather like to go and watch a couple of events, as it might be the only opportunity that they have in their lifetime, yet I, who have always been such an avid sports fan, and can reach the main Olympic stadium in less than an hour from home, have no inclination to buy tickets.

I think that there are several reasons for this. Firstly, I am tired of the number of scandals and unsavoury events that are starting to discredit many sports – bar brawl footballers, bribed cricketers, drug cheat athletes, jockeys taking backhanders, and behind all of them, the dubious types who do most of the damage and who cause such havoc purely for personal financial profit.

Secondly, big business has muscled in on on so many events now. Everything has corporate branding, events are planned to suit television executives wishes instead of the fans, sportsmen and women are told which clothes they may wear and what products they are obliged to endorse, including diet supplements and Laser eye treatments – aren’t these really ‘legal’ cheating? But the outcome for the real fans is paying stupid prices to watch a tournament in order to fill the corporate pockets of the organisations who are running the sport, and without always being certain if teams or competitors are genuinely competing against each other on equal terms. The golfer who sings the praises of Laser eye surgery - doesn’t the treatment give him an unfair advantage? The football team whose management use some obscure type of therapist – is everything he asks the team to do totally above board?

Finally, I don’t see the wealth of personalities in sport any more. There are a handful of characters who would be thought of as entertaining, but due to the money now involved, many sportspeople don’t believe that they can say a few crazy things occasionally because anything they do or say may have an effect on their contract. I find myself wishing for another Daley Thompson, Jackie Stewart, Tony Currie, Joe Bugner or John McEnroe (though I can believe that he’d probably be publicising Laser eye treatment if he was still playing at his peak now – though for the tennis officials and not for himself!)
TAEKWONDO WTF - athlete kicked the referee - www.taekwonDAY.com

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