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Every so often, even in an election year, you read some good news. The latest morsel of good cheer is that by a 2-1 margin, the voters of Anchorage, Alaska, have given their city government a blank check to pursue the 1994 Winter Olympics.
Denver has a committee that would like to get the 1998 games. It is extremely unlikely that America would get to host two consecutive Winter Olympics; the festivities get rotated among continents. So if Anchorage succeeds, Denver's next chance to be an Olympic host won't come until 2006 or thereabouts.
And even then, it's a bad idea. Back in 1972, when the 1976 Winter Olympics were a hot issue in Colorado, the opposition centered on two factors: economics and environment. The Olympics would cost the state a lot of money, and our mountains would get trashed.
Those issues are irrelevant now. By franchising everything from candy bars to automobiles to finance the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Peter Ueberroth brilliantly demonstrated that you can run a profitable Olympics without dipping into the public treasury. As for our pristine mountains, who would notice any more traffic jams, ramshackle condos or fast-food outlets along the I-70 corridor?
The real reason to oppose hosting the Olympic games, winter or summer, is that the games represent an undesirable influence, a huge festival of hypocrisy and chauvinism that masquerades as pure-minded idealism.
Perhaps in 1896, when a French aristocrat revived the ancient Greek games, there was an Olympic ideal. Young people from all over the world would gather. Their common bond would be the undefiled love of their sports; they wouldn't be sullied by professionalism. They would mingle with their counterparts from other nations; the Olympics would be a force for international understanding, rather than yet another display of national rivalries.
Now consider the modern Olympics. They are blatantly commercial. Denver's promoters don't want the Olympics here because the games would contribute to global harmony or even the love of sport for its own sake. Denver wants the games because the games would be good for the beleaguered local economy.
From time to time, you get hustled for money to support our athletes as they train. Most of the money goes to highly paid coaches and bloated staff budgets. Further, when the deserving athlete you helped support wins a few gold medals, followed by some lucrative endorsement contracts from the makers of breakfast cereals and running shows -- does he return any of that windfall to those generous folks who helped advance his career? Or does he see whether that might translate into a book or film contract, too?
Ah, but those tarnished Olympics do contribute to better international relations. The athletes are housed in armed camps, and they don't mingle with any other nation's competitors.
How do we judge an Olympics? I'll give you a hint. The
old platitude about It's not whether you won or lost,
but how you played the game
is more applicable in the
winning is the only thing
NFL than it is in our
noble and amateur Olympics. All that's important is how
many medals we bring back. Why else would America's Olympic
hierarchy have proposed hiring George Steinbrenner to make
sure we do better in 1992?
Somehow, the Olympics maintain an aura of purity and idealism, when in fact the games are an international observance of jingoism, career advancement and steroid abuse. I am sure that it is possible to hold an Olympics in Colorado without bankrupting the state or further destroying our environment. But we already have enough problems with greed and hypocrisy here; why should we ask for more?
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