going for the fools' gold


By Burt Prelutsky

What is it about the Olympic Games that excites so many people? Why do some folks who couldn’t tell a double axel from a Ford axle suddenly have to race home so as not to miss the luge competition? Why does anybody care who wins the gold in curling or synchronized swimming? Why will millions of Americans who wouldn’t attend a track meet if you paid them sit spellbound so long as the shots being put and the javelins being hurled are Olympic events?

I was just a child when I first became disillusioned with the entire circus. I recall being fed the usual malarkey that the purpose of the Games was to foster international good will and to celebrate individual accomplishment. So why, I used to wonder, did the newspapers always emphasize the competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for gold medals?

I even realized at a tender age that the business about amateurs was a load of hooey. Everybody knew the Soviet athletes were amateurs in name only. And what’s more, everybody knew that the Soviet and East German lady athletes were shot so full of steroids that they were women in name only.

Nothing associated with the Olympics has ever done anything but fuel my cynicism. Although it happened before I was born, I was offended that the Olympic committee, under the leadership of the racist anti-Semite Avery Brundage, allowed Hitler’s Nazi Germany to host the Games.

Over the years, cities would grovel and bribe the Olympic officials for the opportunity to go bankrupt constructing venues that would never be used again. Some of the more memorable moments not usually included in Olympic highlight films have included the French wheeling and dealing with various judges to improve the chances of their athletes taking home the gold; the farce when time kept being put back on the clock so that the Russians could beat the Americans at basketball; the disgrace of the American track stars down in Mexico City raising black-gloved fists to show contempt for the nation that paid their freight; the American basketball players who refused to be housed in the Olympic Village because it would have cramped their womanizing; and of course, the butchery that took place at Munich.

There are those who insist that these various gymnasts, skiers, hurdlers and pole vaulters, have dedicated their young lives to pursuing dreams of Olympic glory, and that they deserve to display their talents on a world stage. To which I say: Why? Just because some kid has decided to devote every waking hour to jumping over a bar or to making figure-eights, why are they so deserving of our attention? So far as I can see, all it leads to is a whole bunch of other little children deciding that they, too, should consider an Olympic gold medal as a goal worth pursuing. God forbid the world should ever be bereft of youngsters capable of performing a triple lutz.

Why on earth should anybody want to shine a spotlight on some 18-year-old who will be a 19-year-old has-been? We don’t, after all, feel the need to make media stars out of kids who are studying to be doctors, plumbers and auto mechanics.

I mean, let’s face it, in real life, when your car won’t start or your toilet won’t stop, everyone’s idea of a hero is a guy with a wrench, not someone with a gold medal.

 

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