Shmolympicism
by our sporting correspondent, E. N. Beej
After the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2008 Summer Games to Beijing last Friday (July 13, 2001) and Canadian IOC member Dick Pound came in third in the race to replace retiring President Juan Samaranch on the following Monday, the newspapers, radio and TV were flooded with citizens, journalists and broadcasters bemoaning the fact that geopolitical considerations rather than the bids and candidates themselves decided these outcomes. I'd like to offer a few observations of my own.
- We are told that the Toronto bid was the best of the five
finalists. But the people who spun that story were the TO bid people
with their obvious vested interests. That the media merely parroted
this line was to be expected. Far be it from them to ask, for example,
on what basis did anyone decide that the Toronto bid was the best? or
has anyone seen the Beijing, Paris, Osaka or Istanbul proposals to
compare? In any case, can anyone have any serious doubts that China
will mount a fabulous Games? This is just another example of the
media failing to ask the necessary questions and crossing the line
into boosterism.
- The human rights angle was fascinating. On the one hand, the
Tienanmen Square massacre and Tibet were held up to be the shameful
acts they were and continue to be, but it also seems to me that all in
all the Chinese have done a remarkably good job at integrating more
than 50 different ethnic peoples into a fairly cohesive society.
Canada on the other hand cannot possibly claim to be an unblemished
champion of human rights causes given the plight of its aboriginal
peoples. The Chinese massacred several hundred protestors
in Tienanmen Square in a single episode but Canada allows many of its
aboriginal citizens to die the slow death of a thousand cuts sniffing
gas and solvents, committing suicide, living in substandard housing,
etc.
- The IOC apparently has asked members of the Toronto bid
committee to submit a proposal for the 2012 Games. The media
reporting on this "fact" of course interpreted this as a great
compliment to not only the bid team but the City, implicitly believing
that the next time, the Games will be Toronto's to lose. To my mind,
even if the invitation was extended to the TO bid group (and who's to
say it was?), why would anyone trust the IOC after decades of
corruption and deception? Why would any right thinking person not
make an about face and take a walk at the mere mention of the IOC?
- The Toronto Olympic bid group by its own admission did absolutely
everything it could to bring the Games to Toronto. Obviously, their
best was not good enough. Therefore, why would we want these same
individuals (John Bitove, Bob Richardson, et al.) who have just
demonstrated that they weren't up to the challenge to do the same in
the future?
- Evidently, when you have to deal with a deceitful and corrupt
organization like the IOC, you have to practice deception and
corruption yourself. Make no mistake, not only was the IOC lied to by
the TO group but so were Canadians. For example, the budget
submitted to the IOC included the "honest" mistake of not converting
currency to 2008 dollars, thus painting a much rosier profit picture.
Also, the proposal claimed that 71% of the facilities are already
built, but I defy anyone to point them out to me; they do not exist.
Mention was also made of the Skydome but the fee to use the facility
was probably not factored in. The promise that the bid would be
funded entirely by the private sector became a $6 million lie. The TO
bid staff played fast and loose with the facts in an attempt to fool
not only the IOC but Torontonians as well.
- Canada's IOC member Dick Pound who was touted in some quarters
as the successor to retiring President Juan Samaranch came in a
dismal third in the balloting. Although Canadians including the media
generally took this as yet another slap in their collective faces, the
question that comes to my mind is why would we automatically assume
Pound was any more worthy than any of the other candidates? To a
degree, he portrayed himself as the person who would clean up the IOC
after the recent bid scandals came to light. However, it is clear that
it's business as usual at the IOC so I think we can conclude that
Pound failed in whatever attempts he made to reform the
organization, not that we ever heard of anything he was doing to this
end. Again, the media simply seemed to assume that being Canadian
made Pound somehow morally superior to the rest of his IOC
colleagues and therefore the only one worthy of ascendancy to the
Presidency. My own guess is that he was more or less, pretty much one
of the gang he ran with for a decade.
- The egos and stupidity of politicians and the business
community's eagerness to take advantage of politicians' egos and
stupidity makes a future bid inevitable. My only hope is that I won't
be here to see it. I couldn't stand yet another public international
humiliation at the hands of the IOC.
Shmolympicism © E. N. Beej, 2001
