The Winter Olympics: it’s sport, Jim, but not as Dixon knows it.
What is it about the Winter Olympics that is so ridiculous? I’m not talking about the obviously ridiculous aspects, such as the two-man luge, ice hockey and figure skating. The Summer Olympics has its share of ridiculousness too, including synchronised swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, and almost everything involving horses. I mean an overall sense of ridiculousness. The same air doesn’t surround the Summer Olympics – and it’s not only because relatively few competitors in the summer games wear quite as much lycra in as patently unsuitable circumstances. (If I came off a luge at 100km/h, I’d want more than a few microns of flimsy material between me and a long, red smear down the ice.)
I think it’s because the Winter Olympics are kind of elitist. Not that they’re open only to elite athletes. They’re not, and nor are the Summer Olympics. You don’t have to be the best in the world to take part in an Olympics; you only have to be the best out of all the other people in your country who choose to do the same thing. I suspect that in Australia, when it comes to Winter Olympic events, we’re not fishing in a very deep pond. One thing that gets me about the Winter Olympics is how exclusive it is – in the sense that many people are prevented from taking part, due to their socio-economic background, not due to their athletic ability. And it’s snowboarding that made me realise this.
Snowboarding is a perfectly acceptable pastime, as long as it stays up on the tops of mountains, out of the sight and out of the way of the rest of us. But it has no place at the Olympic games. You don’t get to be a great snowboarder without having the wherewithal to buy a snowboard and – I presume – spend a considerable amount of time, at considerable expense, on some of the world’s best man-made ski slopes. When it comes to the Summer Olympics, there are umpteen stories of kids born in the boondocks, or who came from crushingly underprivileged backgrounds, and who were inspired by their Olympic heroes to become champions themselves.
Will the sight of the perfectly-groomed-and-manicured Torah Bright be the same kind of inspiration to kids in the slums of Aspen and Whistler and St Moritz? Even now, I can imagine them taking up their snowboards, fashioned from planks of wood or old doors scavenged from the local tip, and heading for the half-pipes, hewn from the sides of mountains with their own hands. I get that some Winter Olympic sports are based on real life. Cross-country skiing, for instance. That’s how people in snowy countries get about if they’re not driving a Volvo. It’s as natural to them as it is for a Kenyan kid to run 40km to the shops. And the biathlon. You ski, you shoot something, you ski a bit further.
That’s how people used to live – going out to hunt what they were later going to eat. Skating is a sensible way to cross a frozen pond. Skating very, very fast is sensible if you’re being pursued across that pond by something that wants to eat you. Snowboarding has none of these attributes. It’s a rich-kids’ “sport” dreamed up and popularised by, and for, rich kids, requiring substantial sums of money to participate, and requiring its participants to dress like Gore-Tex clowns. If falling down a hill is your thing, go for it, I say. But where’s the satisfaction in being the best in a sport that excludes a very significant proportion of the world’s population? If you’re the world’s best footballer (as in soccer – the only real football), say, or 100m runner, you can be far more certain that you actually are the best, not just the best out of the lucky people who can afford to do your sport.
Usain Bolt need not lose too much sleep wondering if there’s some kid who, but for a few bucks and access to a pair of decent shoes, might blow him off the running track. He can be fairly certain that he’s pretty much the very best on the planet at what he does. Cristiano Ronaldo – love him or loathe him – doesn’t need to wonder if there’s a kid in Brazil who, if only he’d had a ball to kick around, would today be wearing No 9 for Ronaldo’s club. These sports are open slather – just about anyone, anywhere, can make a start and, if they’re sufficiently talented, they’ll be noticed and their careers nurtured and developed. That is what being the best in the world means. Not just being the best of the rich kids.
