After Professor Babiak came to talk to us about the Olympics, I began to think about what role these bi-annual games play in the lives of people across the globe. For years, both the summer and winter versions of the Olympics were outlets for the best athletes from hundreds of countries to display their skills on a world stage. There was a certain romance that existed within the games, and it was infrequent to hear people question the legality of certain events. However, in the last ten to fifteen years, it seems as though scandals have flood the Olympics to a point where the entire spectacle feels impure.
In recent Olympics, no sport has been free of scandal. In 2002, a French figure skating judge admitted to being pressured to pick a Russian couple to win the pairs event regardless of the results, when many felt that the Canadian team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier deserved to win. The scandal took on an even greater presence when the judge attempted to retract these statements, causing further controversy and chaos. More recently, in the summer games in Beijing in 2008, serious questions were raised about the ages of some of the Chinese women gymnasts, who appeared to be much younger than their reported age. Regardless of the truth in either of these cases, the public attention brought to these scandals severely tainted the result of the respective competitions. Gymnastics and figure skating, long two of the Olympics purest and most graceful sports, have been tainted by recent controversies, raising the question: what has happened to the Olympics?
I grew up a huge fan of the Olympics. I have distinct memories of watching every Olympics starting at just six years old, with the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Therefore, when faced with the question of how relevant or “believable” the Olympics are now, I will admit I am the first to come to their defense. Sure, there is no shortage of scandal in every sport across both kinds of games, but I am hesitant to think that these take away the legitimacy of winning a gold medal. After all, I find it hard to believe that there has been a true increase in scandals in Olympics of recent years, and instead believe it can be better attributed to the increase in media and the speed of news travel over the last thirty years. In our class discussion of the Olympics, we came up with at least ten downsides of the modern games, also known as reasons one might not want to watch. Many of these reasons had to do with scandal, yet viewership for both the Winter and Summer Games has continued to increase. So, while we may be more skeptical of the results we see, my opinion is that the Olympics are no worse than they were decades ago, when scandals were more rare and less reported.
What does everyone else think?
- Alex Jacobs
