Another Olympics?

by BRIAN LOCKHART

The 2022 Olympic Winter games are approaching and set to take place in Beijing, China in February.

Athletes have been preparing for years for this event. They train and hone their skills to become the best athletes in their sport so they can wear their national colours with pride.

The Olympics are the ultimate event in the sporting world. Even if an athlete doesn't win a medal, there is still the prestige of being good enough to make your national team.

Athletics is about competition. It's about breaking records and striving to be the best in your field.

It is about a lot of hard work and
personal sacrifice.

With some exceptions, Olympic athletes don't get rich from competing. Most will never sign a contract to be on a box of Wheaties or sign their name on a custom brand of running shoes.

The Olympics should be about sport, and politics should never be part of it.

It is the international level of the event that draws world leaders to somehow push politics onto a sporting event.

U.S. President Joe Biden is now pushing for some kind of ridiculous diplomatic boycott of the Beijing games. It doesn't mean U.S. athletes won't compete; it means there won't be any American government officials involved in the games.

Big deal! Why would you want government officials involved in a sporting event anyway?

The Olympics have always had some political garbage tossed into the games.

From fists raised in protest on the podium to countries withdrawing from the games because of other political reasons, there has always been some kind of nonsense that keeps runners off the track and bobsledders off the course.

In the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, less than 67 countries competed after several armed conflicts caused other countries to withdraw in protest.

In 1980, 66 countries chose not to attend the games in Moscow in protest of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan. That's some real irony isn't it?

Four years later, the Soviets started their own protest and led a bunch of Eastern bloc countries in a boycott of the 1984 games in Los Angeles.

What did all these boycotts and protest accomplish? Well, nothing, other than having some athletes watch the games from home and see their spot in the track and field events filled by someone else.

The Olympic games are rarely successful financial events. They don't generate a lot of money and are filled with cost over-runs.

If you google former Olympic venues, many did not become a lasting sports centre for high level competition. Many sites are now in ruins and falling apart.

I don't know why a city would want to go to the expense of hosting a one-time event that will cost billions of dollars but not produce a return on investment.

Maybe it's time to scrap the whole idea of different cities hosting the event.

It's time to select a permanent place to host the summer Olympics and a separate location to host the winter games.

Once you build the entire venue that can host all the sports, have each country contribute a yearly fee for maintenance. Split by over 200 competing countries, it wouldn't cost that much to maintain one sporting venue.

It would eliminate the political aspect on many levels.

For starters, it would eliminate the politics that goes into the bogus IOC selection committee that determines which city will host the next Olympics.

Secondly, if no country in particular is hosting the event, why would you protest the Olympics because Bermuda has finally invaded Australia?

The problem with this idea is of course, the massive political crap that would be involved in determining a single location for a sports venue.

There isn't a chance in the world you could come up with a committee that would search out appropriate sites and come to a logical conclusion without a bunch of in-fighting and political interference.

The IOC is already a massive political disaster on its own – trying to get them to make a sound decision would be next
to impossible.

It would be a decision based on politically manoeuvring, national pride, and bribes.

Once built, however, a permanent home for the Olympic game would provide a stability that is needed to have the competition without all the political nonsense that goes with a single country hosting every four years.

It would also provide an international venue for other athletic meets between Olympics.

Politics should not be involved in sports.

Let the athletes have their moment in the sun without the interference of government leaders and bureaucrats.