Why I don't like the Olympics

I hate the Olympics.

Seriously.  I can't stand them.

Anybody who's been reading this blog knows that I've been posting frequently in anticipation of the Games that open this Friday.  Why do I waste time writing about something I hate?

It's complicated.

It ought to be very simple.  Children in this country take up sports they enjoy, as do children in other countries all over the world.  In each sport in each country, stars emerge.  A kid proves he's the best in his neighborhood, then his county, then his state, then his region of the country, then the entire country... and then what?  The Olympics, of course, where he goes up against the kids who have risen to the top of the sport in their countries.  The winner is, in the truest sense, the Champion of the World.  (And yes, I am talking about female athletes too; I use the pronouns "he"  and "his" because it is less awkward than saying "he or she" and "his or her" every time.)

But in the real world, things are never that simple.

So much is unfair in the modern Olympics that I don't even know where to begin.  The financial machinery might be the most obvious place.  With the world's biggest corporations pouring their sponsorship into the Games and its telecast, somebody is getting rich, but it sure isn't the athletes.  In a near-zero-sponsorship sport like canoe and kayak racing, the boat and gear, the travel, the lodging, the tutors who help the kid catch up on missed schoolwork... all that stuff is paid for by the parents in most cases.  And so it's no coincidence that almost all the participants in small sports like that come from affluent backgrounds.  But the higher-profile sports like gymnastics and track and field don't fare that much better.  Even some two- or three-time Olympians in these sports are scraping to get by on a piecemeal patchwork of small-time sponsorships, part-time jobs, "reallocated" student loans, and, last but not least, family support.  The only exceptions are people who have become household names like Michael Phelps and... Michael Phelps.

The only way I can think of to change the distribution of wealth in favor of the athletes is for the athletes to refuse to participate under any other circumstances.  But that will never happen.  I mean, how do you ask an athlete on the verge of his one best shot at the Games to go on strike?  The corporate overlords who profit from the Olympics are sitting on a golden egg of athlete exploitation that the college football barons in this country can only dream of.

Then there is the issue of inequality among the different sports.  Some sports get hours and hours of television coverage; others get none.  And to a certain extent that's understandable: if market research has revealed that fifty million viewers enjoy watching women's gymnastics while only fifty thousand care to watch something like canoe and kayak racing, common sense says there should be more of the former on TV than the latter.

More complex is the issue of what sports get to be in the Olympics, and how those sports are treated once they are in.

In 1992, when whitewater slalom returned to the Olympics after a 20-year absence, each nation was allowed to enter three boats in each of the four Olympic classes (men's single canoe, men's double canoe, women's kayak, and men's kayak).  In the twenty years since, that number has shrunk to one boat per class, if the nation has even qualified one.  Flatwater sprint has felt a similar squeeze: in 1992, there were 17 U.S. paddlers on the lake in Castelldefels outside Barcelona.  This summer on Dorney Lake outside London, there will be two.  Two!  One male 200-meter kayaker and one female 500-meter and 200-meter kayaker.  No canoeists.  No tandem boats or fours.

Granted, the U.S. is not very strong in canoe and kayak racing.  But in nations that are strong, such as Slovakia, Germany, and France in slalom, and Hungary, Germany, and the Czech Republic in flatwater, athletes who would likely be in the medal hunt are sitting at home because their nations were allowed only one boat per class.

The International Olympic Committee, wishing to control the overall size of the Olympic Games, has capped the number of canoe and kayak athletes at 328.  That includes slalom and sprint athletes, whom the IOC treats as participants in one sport even though the two disciplines are as different as swimming is from diving.  Some of those spots are reserved for parts of the world that have little or no tradition of canoe and kayak racing, like Africa and South America, because the International Canoe Federation wants to promote paddlesports in those places (a noble purpose, though it does shut out deserving athletes in stronger canoe/kayak nations).  And in the coming years, as the IOC strives for more gender equality by bringing in women's canoe classes (also a good thing), existing classes likely will be eliminated.  My guess is that the addition of women's single canoe in slalom will be accompanied by the loss of a K4 class in flatwater.

Having been in charge of a few events myself (on a much smaller scale, of course), I can understand the IOC's desire to keep the Olympics a manageable size.  But not all sports are being subjected to the same degree of constraint.  In track and field (of which I am a big fan, having been a high school and college runner myself), nations have been allowed to enter up to three athletes per event (provided they meet the Olympic qualifying standard) throughout my lifetime, and that remains unchanged.  Sure, even under this format some medal-capable athletes may fall short, but I feel better telling an athlete "Tough luck... you didn't make it" when there are three spots available than when there is only one.

In any case, the sport of canoe and kayak racing has not thrived during its inclusion on the Olympic programme.  Participation in whitewater slalom has plummeted.  When I started racing C1 slalom in the mid 1990s, there were about forty entrants at nationals in the C1 class alone.  That number was up near a hundred in the 80s and 70s, when slalom was not even in the Olympics.  But in the last decade, the number in has typically been fewer than fifteen.

I doubt the Olympics is solely to blame for this decline; whitewater paddling has seen many changes to its culture that have shifted the focus away from slalom as an ideal way to develop skills.  These days I sense that most recreational boaters see slalom as the domain of "elite athletes only" or some pejorative term like "racer-heads" or "fitness-nazis."

But when I was racing, I could see some internal fissures forming in the slalom community that I think were helped along by the sport's Olympic status.  By the late 90s, USA Canoe/Kayak, feeling the pressure to contribute their share to the U.S. medal count, was working to identify and separate those it deemed Olympic material from the Joe-Six-Pack types like me.  They did so mostly in subtle ways that were hard to pin down, though at one point a USACK official, in an e-mail blast regarding the number of people entered in the team trials, complained that some of us "didn't belong there."  Ouch.  I mostly just went about my training and didn't let it bother me, but I wonder how many people who might have liked to try the sport were discouraged by such attitudes.

Meanwhile, we put up with sports that, at least in my opinion, should not be in the Olympics.

If I were the chief poobah with absolute power to decide if a sport gets to be in the Olympics, I would most definitely work to control the size of the Games.  I would start with this line of questioning: "Is an Olympic gold medal the true pinnacle of achievement in this sport?  Is a trip to the Olympics the ultimate experience for an athlete in this sport?"  And if the answer is anything shy of an emphatic "YES!", that sport would not make the cut.

You know where I'm going with this, don't you?

That's right:  Bye-bye, men's basketball.

I'm sure that many, if not all, members of the U.S. men's basketball team are genuinely proud to be on the Olympic team.  Certainly, when cameras and microphones are pointed their way, most of them have the diplomatic common sense to say, "Oh yes, it's an honor to represent my country."  But you will never convince me that Lebron James is as enthusiastic about playing in the Olympics as he is about winning the NBA title, which he did just last month.  To me, it seems the Olympics is more something that an NBA player might do during his summer vacation if you beg him nicely enough and maybe bribe him a little.  In any case, while I have great respect for the sport of basketball--as I do for almost every sport--I don't think it needs to be in the Olympics.

Of course, the main reason it is in the Olympics is the TV ratings it supposedly generates.  I remember well my utter disgust as I watched the opening ceremony for the 2000 Games in Sydney, hoping to catch a half-second glimpse of one of my slalom-racing friends during the Parade of Nations, only to listen to the announcers for NBC (which at the time held the broadcast rights for the NBA) exclaim, fawningly, "Oh, look!  There's Alonzo Mourning!  And look!  There's Vince Carter!"  Give me a break.

Well, I haven't exhausted my laundry list of gripes with the modern-day Olympic Games, but maybe it's time to give it a rest.  After all, most of the time I try to avoid negativity on this blog.  So... what nice things can I say about the Olympics?  Given all the complaints I have lain out above, why do I even bother with them?

The simplest answer is, the athletes.  None of the problems cited above is their fault.  From the most famous basketball player to the most obscure taekwondo artist, all are simply going about their business of working to be the best they can be in their sports.  They have successfully jumped through whatever absurd hoops have been placed before them, and deserve their moment in the spotlight.  For sports like slalom and sprint canoeing, whose access to the Games is restricted, the Olympics is not as legitimate a championships as the Worlds, but it is at least a chance for many of the best athletes to perform for an audience that otherwise would not even know the sport exists.

So from this point on, I will encourage my readers to enjoy the Games, and I promise no more negativity (unless somebody from the IOC or the USOC or the ICF or USACK does or says something really stupid, in which case I reserve the right to respond with commensurate snarkiness).

Go to this link for information on what will be broadcast when in your TV market.  The whitewater slalom competition runs from July 29 to August 2, and the flatwater sprint regatta is August 6-11.

I'll probably pass on tonight's opening ceremony, but I'll certainly be watching whatever canoe and kayak coverage is available, along with some track and field and maybe a few other things.  I'll share whatever the paddlers do here.

So... here's to those two weeks every four years when the rest of the world gets to see what you and I know every day--that there's simply nothing better than paddling a boat.