TriumphAnt

Here’s Canadian golfer and 2003 Masters Champion Mike Weir in a recent Globe and Mail column he wrote describing his preparation for a very tough 2004 PGA Championship course. After he notes the enormous length of the course, and the fact that it will require a lot of attention to his “short game”, he suddenly realizes that he forgot to bring the club he considers most crucial to his short game:

“Naturally I was a little panicked when I went
to my golf bag for my practice round Monday
and realized my pitching wedge was in the back
of my truck in Utah, mixed in there with my
fly-fishing rods and hip waders.”

A quick phone call to his wife got the required club via courier to Mr Weir in time to be included in his 2004 PGA arsenal. But I found much amusement (and not a little serenity) in the discovery that one of my sports idols – despite having golfing abilities that are stratospherically beyond mine – can also be possessed of other traits remarkably similar to my own. (“Sweetie, do you know where my hat is?... Check your floppy disk storage shelf… Oh… of course. What was I thinking when I looked on the coathook?”)

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I did some googling of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently after she appeared on The Daily Show to plug a newly-published collection of her Bush-related columns. And those who dislike her, it seems, dislike her with considerable intensity. But I was reminded of the old adage about being careful when you point the finger because three other fingers on your pointing hand always point right back at yourself, when I read a blistering attack on her that appeared in something called the Lufkin Daily News on May 30, 2003. In it, The Daily News announced they would no longer carry her columns, and did so in an editorial that contained the following pair of howlers:

“But unlike the Times, which has been engaged in a
torturous exercise of naval gazing and self-flagellation,
with its accustomed arrogance, since it was revealed
that one of its younger reporters had committed all sorts
of journalistic sins, we are doing something about it,
and fast.”

and

“Dowd violated one of the cardinal tents of the newspaper
business: Don't mislead your readers, because your
credibility is your only currency.”

I can’t help but see battleship-watchers screwing up their eyes against the blinding sunshine as they engage in “the torturous exercise of naval gazing” and papal campers purple with fury at discovering that an uninvited New York Times columnist has penetrated one their senior prelate’s wigwams.

As they say so eloquently on the internet, “Pot. Kettle. Black.”

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I had a long non-work related conversation recently with a colleague at work. (Slow day.) It began with a simple enough question – “Are you going to watch the Olympics?” The bare essence of my eventual reply was “No.” But getting there became a lengthy exercise that combined curmudgeonry, nostalgia, a lament for what’s been lost, and just plain idealism.

I was in my almost-mid 20s when Canada hosted the Summer Games in Montreal in 1976. At that time, the horror of the massive post-Games debt was still in the future and the country was awash in the pride of the event. In the run-up to the Games, I remember the CBC ran a multi-part television history of the modern Summer Olympics with moments I can still vividly recall to this day.

Each program took a single year’s Games or a single event throughout the life of the modern Games – the marathon, for example, and presented its highlights with the excitement and suspense of a tremendously crisp thriller. That’s when I first heard the names of Paavo Nurmi – the “Flying Finn” who eventually brought home nine gold and three silver medals as a middle and long distance runner in the 1920, 1924 and 1928 Games, and Abibi Bikela who, with his colleague Mamo Wolde, achieved the unprecedented outcome of three successive men’s gold medals (Bikela in 1960 and 1964, and Wolde in 1968) in the marathon, for Ethiopia of all countries.

I watched almost in tears as one marathon runner, in what Games I no longer recall, limped across the finish line in intense pain long after the race had ended, to a darkened, empty stadium, hobbling solely on the determination to record a finish in the event to which he had committed himself. (Well thank you Google. This humbling example is no longer anonymous to me, thanks to Barbara Taddeo, a middle school Special Education teacher from California who placed a personal diary of her Olympic travels to Sydney online. Given her vocation, it’s no wonder this example shines in her mind as well.)

“History. One of my favorite Olympic stories to share
with students is the story of John Stephen Akhwari
of Tanzania, a marathon runner in the 1968 Mexico City
Games. Akhwari injured his leg early in the race. He
finished the race in last place, entering the dark, almost
empty stadium more than an hour after the winner.
Akhwari said, ‘My country did not send me to Mexico
City to start the race. They sent me to finish the race.’
His actions exemplified an athlete who did not give up.”

It’d be so easy (and no doubt boring as hell) to lose myself and my vast audience in a recital of randomly recalled decathlon, gymnastic, swimming and you-name-it competitors -- men and women -- whose faces and achievements made that entire series so riveting to me. (And I’ll also skip the pathetic sidebar tale of my 16-year old libido-triggered crush on Czech gymnast Vera Caslavska in the summer of '68.)

But one simple observation sums up what, to me, makes those images so unique. The one – the only – corporate sponsorship that I recall turning up throughout most of the series is “Omega”. Because Omega made the massive clocks that showcased final times in the running events.

And thus was launched the curmudgeonly part of my reply to my colleague. In seeking to ensure that his Games would not lose money, the 1984 (Los Angeles) organizing Committee’s Chairman, Peter Ueberroth, essentially offered every patch of visible space more than four inches square for sale to the highest bidder. And the Games have never been the same. Now it’s a game of Coke vs. Pepsi, of Kodak vs Fuji, of Adidas vs Nike, of Speedo vs Janzen, and of, yes, Timex vs Omega. (And although they’ll never admit it, it’s also a game of Merck and Co vs Pfizer vs GlaxoSmithKline vs Bristol-Myers Squibb. This year, our meds are gonna beat yours.)

I also resent with a passion the admission of paid professional athletes into Olympic competition. And I know this is terribly un-Canadian. After all, we were hard-pressed ever to match the Soviet Red Army Olympic hockey team until we could place NHL stars on the ice against them. But c’mon. The 1992 US Olympic men’s basketball “dream team”, with a roster that included Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, made that Olympic sport a travesty in Barcelona when they took to the court against the amateur teams brought to the Games by countries where basketball players weren’t being paid annually in the millions. And they crushed them, going 8 – 0 en route to the medals podium with scores like 116 – 48 against Angola. Their average winning margin was 43 points. In the gold medal game against Croatia, they won by 32 points.

And Steffi Graf, Olympic gold, 1988 women’s singles tennis, the same year she won four successive major tournaments as a pro? To coin the current vernacular (or is this already outdated?): Puh-LEEEZE!

So no, I won’t watch the Games. OK, probably I will be just curious enough to sit through the highlight reel on the late-evening sports, unless it follows a review of Mike Weir’s performance at this year’s PGA, in which case I’ll go to bed and read the highlights the following morning. But “faster higher stronger”, in the face of a relentless emphasis on the medal-count tote board and the sea of logos, has become, for me, synonymous with “bullshit”.

If I were the Lord of the (Olympic) Rings, I would require something like this as the One Pledge to Bind Them All:

“Interreligious Peace Sports Festival (IPSF) Athletes' Pledge

1. We as athletes from all religions and cultures,
appreciate the gift of life and the physical bodies
we have been given by the Author of Life. It is out
of this appreciation and respect that we avoid
unhealthy behaviors.

2. We as athletes from all religions and cultures
will utilize our abilities to develop our heart, courage,
strength and perseverance. These personal victories
are part of our training to become young
ambassadors for peace.

3. We as athletes from all religions and cultures will
practice sportsmanship and teamwork and use this
training to help build harmony in our family, school,
workplace and community.

4. We as athletes from all religions and cultures pledge
to unite with the rules and the spirit of the Interreligious
Peace Sports Festival and in that, provide a model of
religious and cultural cooperation for athletes around
the world.”

The world really needs two Olympic Games. One for the likes of the Kenyan milers and marathoners who learned to run barefoot because they had no shoes and needed to run in order to make the trip from village to fresh water well and home to village again before the sun went down;

and for Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s women swimmers, who have astonishingly managed to envelop themselves in a “high-neck, vest-style suit that leaves their arms uncovered but covers their legs down to the ankle” so as to not – officially – contravene the dictates of their faith (Unfortunately for the mullahs, this likely will have the effect of making the Pakistani and Afghani women swimmers way sexier than their much barer competition. It’s the Hitchcock principle of suspense, you see. A viewer is more profoundly affected by what the imagination suggests than by what is actually in view, but I digress.);

and for the Iraqi table tennis team who can now come to the Games and not have to fear returning home to torture by Uday and Qusai Hussein if they fail to win.

The other Games would be the forum for the paid powerhouses to strut their stuff. And for these Games, do away with the stupid drug tests. In fact, let’s use these Games to see just how completely a human body’s natural protein can be replaced with artificial chemical compounds. Paint yourself in McDonald’s red and yellow, shove a small personal waterproof rocket between your buttcheeks and swim naked if you want.

But it’s not going to happen, is it? So to the spoiled go the victories.

And I just can’t work myself up to the point where I honestly can say I care. (But to those who do care – enjoy yourselves.)

Finally, I commend to you a film about a Games, in fact, _the_ film about a Games. Leni Riefenstahl died recently, having lived out much of her century-long life vilified for putting the German Nazi Party into such a favourable light in her best-known film, “Triumph of the Will”.

But her second-best known film is “Olympia” and it is simply breathtaking. For the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, Riefenstahl was given unprecedented access to the competition field. She built small railroads beside the track to enable her cameras to follow runners stride by stride. She placed cameras into pits directly beside the pole vault and high jump rails so that the photographed competitors appear to be flying. She shot divers with equal majesty as they soared from the towers and springboards into the outdoor pool. The 1936 Games are best remembered for Hitler’s invitation to the world, intending they should witness proof that Aryans deserve to be called the Master Race, and for a black American runner named Jesse Owens’ memorable RSVP to Hitler’s invitation.

“Olympia” beat out “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as the Best Film of 1938 at that year’s International Film Festival in Venice. It tells the whole story of the 1936 Games, Owens included, because not even Josef Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, could produce the justification for keeping him out of the film. It does so with a worshipful style that makes gods and goddesses of the athletes, amateurs all.

It will knock your socks off.