Opinion

Olympic Fiasco

By CHRISTINE CUNANAN-NOMURA

It was very depressing to read about the fiasco surrounding the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently. According to media reports, certain IOC members abused their powers and privileges and actually received money, perks and favors in exchange for their votes for future Olympic Games sites.

This scandal — the greatest crisis in the 104-year history of the Games — is a most unfortunate tragedy.

For many people, the Olympics represents everything that is good and admirable in mankind. It is synonymous with the pursuit of excellence, the determination to succeed, the maximization of talents and abilities, patriotism, internationalization and a healthy but rigorously competitive spirit. The best in the world cast aside all differences to test their mettle against each other, oftentimes against the worst of odds, and this is why the world is mesmerized by the Games.

I do not know anyone who is not touched by witnessing a major Olympic Games event. I myself have never been athletically inclined. Yet I found tears welling in my eyes when the Japa nese team triumphed in the ski jumps in the Winter Olympics in Nagano last year — simply because the whole event reminded me of what's best in mankind and of just how much we are capable of achieving.

The pureness of the Olympic image naturally led me to expect that those overseeing Olympic events would be exercising the same standards of excellence in morality and performance. After all, many IOC members are former Olympians while the nonathlete members were supposedly picked after exhaustive searches. It was unthinkable that the caretakers of the Olympics would be anything but morally exacting of themselves. To be otherwise would be the biggest hypocrisy of all.

So it was incredibly distasteful for me to read about IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch living in excessive luxury and misusing his influence; African IOC members receiving money in exchange for votes; and relatives of other IOC members receiving scholarships, jobs and real estate deals from cities or countries bidding to be chosen as Olympic sites

Obviously, Samaranch has been in power for too long and should be replaced. At the very least, his personal lifestyle and leadership style (or lack of it) encouraged influence-peddling and other self-serving activities that have harmed the Olympic image.

In fact, the entire IOC board should be revamped and filled with younger and more recently active athletes who are more in touch with what Games participants need and how a 21st century Olympics should be.

This crisis has filled me with nostalgia for an era when competing in the Olympics meant using one's natural skills without the help of medicines or state-of-the-art clothes and equipment; when hosting an Olympics entailed the hospitality and goodwill of citizens rather than the big bucks of global sponsors; and when being on the IOC meant sacrifice, devotion and volunteerism and not pompous luxury and money-making opportunities.

Call me a hopeless idealist, but after reading about the scandal all I wanted to do was stay home and watch the movie "Chariots of Fire" again.

Shukan ST: Feb. 19, 1999

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