Είναι τουλάχιστον άδικη η κριτική. Θα ήταν πιο δόκιμο να παραπονεθεί κάποιος στα σοβαρά για την ποιότητα των τραγουδιών στον διαγωνισμό της Eurovision. Φέρονται στους Ολυμπιακούς σαν να πρέπει να είναι κάποιος θεσμός αξιοκρατικός, πανανθρώπινος και άλλα τέτοια υψηλά ιδεώδη. Γιατί να είναι; Λειτουργεί βάση κάποιου δημοκρατικού θεσμού; Έχει οποιονδήποτε μηχανισμό αυτοβελτίωσης ή ελέγχου;
There are now more than 160 national Olympic committees ranging from the Republic of China, with a population in excess of one billion, to Monaco with about 25,000. The Olympic Charter says they must ‘resist all pressures of any kind, including those of a political or economic nature’. This is a rule which was ignored in the years when communist parties ruled the East Bloc and sports administrators were promoted only because of their devotion to Marx and Lenin.
Many Third World countries integrate their NOCs into state-run Sports Ministries. Several IOC members and presidents of NOCs are high-ranking soldiers. Their countries are run by military juntas. Political and economic independence is as foreign to most of these
countries as the ballot box. In the rest of Barcelona’s 2,300 hotel rooms reserved exclusively for the Olympic Family are more Club members. There is President Un Yone Kim of South Korea. Dr Kim is head of the World Taekwondo Federation – a Korean martial art. amaranch says, ‘Kim is my most trusted adviser.’
Από το βιβλίο Dishonored Games: Corruption, Money & Greed at the Olympics – Vyv Simson, Andrew Jennings. Έχει και μια όμορφη ανάλυση σχετικά με τον ρόλο της Adidas και του Horst Dassler της στο όλο θέμα.
Το ίδιο βιβλίο εξηγεί το οικονομικό θαύμα της Ολυμπιακής Επιτροπής ως εξής:
In the twenty-seven years since Juan Antonio Samaranch joined the IOC it has gone from rags to riches. In the early 1960s the financial position of the Olympic committee was catastrophic. The Rome Games in 1960 had lost 300 million lire. But there was a glimmer of hope. The world’s TV companies were coming to the rescue. But it was still a hand-to-mouth existence. The then IOC member for Kenya, Reggie Alexander, offered to find an accountant who might be willing to do the IOC’s books for nothing. Since then, things have looked up. Now the prestigious international firm of Price Waterhouse audits the accounts.
Those IOC accounts are kept secret. We can disclose that in December 1990 President Samaranch sat at the top of an organisation with a $20 million annual budget and assets of $118 million. There is nearly $60 million in cash – wisely split with seventy five per cent in Swiss francs and the remainder in US dollars to take advantage of the highest interest rates.
Samaranch’s Swiss-based IOC has grown from a staff of eleven squeezed into three second-floor rooms in a house called Mon Repos to
a staff of sixty-one operating out of a luxurious complex of marble-lined buildings and well-manicured parkland around the Chateau de Vidy in Lausanne. The annual wage bill alone now stands at eight million Swiss francs.
Στην Ολλανδία μια αρκετά μεγάλη μελέτη (3500 ενήλικες – Timmers & de Knop 2000, σελ. 164) ρώτησε “γιατί πιστεύετε ότι συμμετέχουν οι αθλητές στους Ολυμπιακούς αγώνες;”
1. Για να δώσουν το καλό παράδειγμα
2. Για τα λεφτά
3. Για νου υγιή σε σώμα υγιές
4. Για να ανεβάσουν το κασέ τους
Είναι πιστεύω χαρακτηριστικό της σχιζοφρένειας που μας χαρακτηρίζει στο θέμα αυτό. Στο “Olympic Education” ο Roland Naul σχολιάζει:
Nevertheless, from their inception the modern Olympic Games have always reflected sport’s particular technical and economic developments and the social and political changes taking place in the world, and this is not about to change: the Olympic Games never have been and never will be immune to this. War and peace have left their mark on the history of the Games in the same way as the Iron Curtain that for 40 years after the Second World War divided the northern hemisphere into East and West. And primarily in the southern hemisphere the politics of apartheid and the African and Asian peoples’ struggle for freedom have left similarly indelible traces in the history of the Olympic Games.
Ο άνθρωπος προσπαθεί σε όλο το βιβλίο του να βρει πως και εάν μπορούμε να βρούμε θετικά στους σύγχρονους Ολυμπιακούς για την παιδεία…. Καταλήγει σε φιλοσοφικά τερτίπια για να τα βολέψει κάπως:
Sadly, there have always been deviations from the orientation of the Olympic idea, not only in the course of Olympic Games. It seems to be almost a particular weakness of the Olympic idea that it can offer little censure or resistance, even in the future. Anyone who addresses this state of affairs with a restricted, purely empirical world view will see only the unsuitability of the Olympic idea as guiding instrument for a better reality. But those who, like once Pierre de Coubertin and now again Jacques Rogge, understand it as mankind’s
continuing striving, in sport and in everyday life, for a holistic, harmonious and perfect development of their individuality in fair consideration and mutual respect for their partner, regardless of that partner’s religious or political world view, can always only approximate to such an Olympic ideal, never quite empirically and demonstrably fulfil it: it is a life’s work, whose objective can in reality never be wholly achieved. Thus, in Pierre de Coubertin’s view, the Olympic Games were not the “end” of his pedagogical objectives but rather the “means” whereby he could achieve those objectives, the Games themselves serving as an “intermediate examination” or a kind of “acid test”.
Η πιο πλήρης και απόλυτη ανάλυση όμως κατά την γνώμη μου είναι στο The Olympic Games: A Social Science Perspective (Kristine Toohey και Anthony James Veal) οι οποίοι καταλήγουν ότι:
From their inception to the present, the modern Olympic Games have been influenced by politics at both intra-national and international levels. Just as other international sporting events organised similarly along national lines (such as the Commonwealth
Games and the Soccer World Cup) are influenced by the ideologies, rivalries and policies of competing nations, and become political currency, it would be unrealistic to expect the Olympics to be an cxccption to this exchange. Yet, we still hear that hackneyed and illusory phrase “politics should be kept out of the Olympics’, ironically often voiced by politicians.
Συνοψίζουν δε όμορφα το θέμα με αναφορά στους Clarke & Clarke (1982) που το έγραψαν έτσι:
This is a proposition which assumes that politics and sport arc two clearly separated fields of life. … But to describe politics in this way is to leave out a different level of political relations. These relations lie outside the formal arena of party politics, and operate in the maintenance of social patterns of power, domination and subordination throughout the whole of society. It is this aspect of politics that is involved in ‘managing’ a socicty composed of divided and conflicting classes and groups. It is… a level of political activity that stresses the importance of ideology, particularly, in the role of presenting a divided society as if it was an harmonious unity.
Το ίδιο βιβλίο αντιμετωπίζει και με πιο σύγχρονους όρους το θέμα της διαφήμισης στους Ολυμπιακούς και της εμπορικής όψης του θέματος. Πέρα από τις υστερίες ιδεολόγων οι Ολυμπιακοί είναι μυστήριο και σε όρους marketing με ιδιαίτερα ασαφές το πλεονέκτημα της συμμετοχής των εταιρειών. Έχει την ιδιομορφία ότι πληρώνεις μεν αλλά μετά μόνο αν ξοδέψεις δισεκατομμύρια θα ξέρει καν οποιοσδήποτε στον κόσμο ότι εμπλέκεται η εταιρεία με τους αγώνες. Δηλαδή πληρώνεις για να πληρώσεις και άλλα για να τους διαφημίζεις!
Και σε όλο αυτό το κύκλωμα όλοι σταυροκοπιούνται σαν Καθολικές παρθένες όποτε ακουστεί κάτι περί σκανδάλου!
Like a lollypop dangled in front of a toddler, or a “scholarship” waved at an IOC member, the temptations placed in the path of Olympic athletes are impossible to ignore and, for some, equally impossible to resist.
Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games – Christopher A. Shaw
Ο δε Varda Burstyn αναλύει μεθοδικά γιατί είναι ιδιόμορφος το κουκούλωμα των Ολυμπιακών σκανδάλων. Οι Ολυμπιακοί ανήκουν σε ξεχωριστή κατηγορία και σε σχέση με τα ΜΜΕ:
The main culprit in maintaining public ignorance about both Olympic corruption and the Games’ negative impacts are the mass media.
It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the structural integration of the media into the Olympic industry has turned them into promoters — not journalists or critics — of all things Olympic. In all the cases explored in this book [Helen Lenskyj’s Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism], an integration of media, politicians’, IOC, NOC and local Olympic committees’ interests was strongly in evidence during both bid and preparation processes. This elite integration resulted in systematic media censorship of opposition to the Games and of analyses of their problems and negative consequences. This has taken place largely through the powerful act of pure omission, with a strong dose of distortion, ridicule and minimization thrown in for good measure. The Olympic industry is a large component of what Sut Jhally has termed the “sport-media complex.” One of the great lessons of the past decades is that when the media’s economic interests in a sporting event or institution are significant, journalists turn, in their majority, from reporters to impresarios.
Αν και δεν συμπαθώ γενικά τις υπερβολικά απλοϊκές οικονομικής φύσης αναλύσεις των media, εδώ τα στοιχεία είναι εντυπωσιακά. Οι Ολυμπιακοί είναι μια πολυεθνική εταιρεία η οποία εκμεταλλεύεται την ανοησία όσων πιστεύουν στα ολυμπιακά ιδεώδη και εθελοτυφλούν (πολύ) στα πρακτικά θέματα που προκύπτουν.
ΥΓ Διαβάστε εδώ μια ωραία μελέτη σχετικά με το πολύκροτο θέμα των πλεονεκτημάτων από την διεξαγωγή Ολυμπιακών για την πόλη που τους φιλοξενεί. Economic_Impacts_of_the_Olympic_Games
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