High life
Play the game
Taki
nne of the funniest things I've heard %-lsince Prince Andrew, was the renewed call by Constantine Karamanlis for the Olympic Games to be held permanently in Greece in order to rid them of political in- terference and commercialisation. In view of the fact that even a 12-and-under marbles tournament in Greece is likely to be politically interfered with, and most Greeks make a Shylock like Joe Dwek seem un- commercial by comparison, the Greek president's call gave me my biggest laugh since the royal intellectual visited the city the commies are afraid to come near.
The plain truth is that Greece is the last place where the Games will not be in- terfered with, and Switzerland the only one that has a chance to make them revert to what they once were. After all, the Swiss have kept their armed neutrality for 800 years, have managed to screen out the kind of terrorist vermin every country in Europe seems to open its frontiers to, and could ac- commodate both the summer and winter Games. My vote goes to Switzerland, but here's the catch. The wise Swiss do not want the Games even if they were paid to take them. So awful have the Games become that the frugal Swiss, a people who will do anything for money, won't touch them with the proverbial ten-foot pole.
The real Olympic spirit as it has emerged in practice rather than theory over the years since the Soviet Union entered the games in 1952 has involved cheating, doping, and outright favouritism by Eastern bloc judges against the West — all of it in the name of national pride. At times the cheating by the Eastern side has been so intense that even the test that had to be devised in order to peek into the underwear of the various female contestants, to see if they really were females, had to be revised. In fact it is already redundant, the new test that is. There are men, and ugly ones at that, who are competing as East German women because they have managed to change enough male chromosomes for female ones without, needless to say, changing anything else. (As the joke in the various Olympic villages used to go, the Russian women and the East German swimmers were the only female competitors who wore jock straps.)
What will happen in Los Angeles? Easy. It will be the first time in 32 years that amateurs will compete against other amateurs. C'est tout. And that was the way it was when my father and uncle competed in Los Angeles in 1932. My daddy ran in the final heat of the 400-metre hurdles. The year before, the world-record-holder, a German by the name of Trosbach, came to Athens in order to compete in a Pre'
Olympic meet. His record of 14.1 for the 110-metre hurdles had stood for two years, I believe. My mother's brother beat hire by
a hair in the 110, and such was the excite' ment of the Greek government iheY
declared a public holiday for the next daY; My uncle reaped even more than the rest 01 the Greeks. When he went to work in lid bank the day after, he was told he COw take the afternoon off. Yes, those were the days. Now we 118,,v,,e the New Soviet Man, proof of what can done by a government that neglects its citizens but concentrates on producing New Soviet Man for propaganda Purposes. Nobody in Russia owns a yacht, Yet the team Russians are fielding strong yachting in international competitions. Nobody in Russia has a swimming pool yet the Rus "sians are challenging the Americans in swimming, not to mention the East G6ere mans, another country without pools. anywhere in the Soviet Union and I'll wag), you anything you will never see a baskethte game. Yet in 1972 the Russkies beat !I'll Americans at their own game. one
proves that the New Soviet Man, sonlet,
who can easily jump seven feet ands ww:
the 1,500 metres in under 15 minutes, is ter- the
rified of a free labour movement in P°Iall,i0 of a free press in Czechoslovakia, of rauls, free Europe, even of rag-tag Afghan rebe is The reason the Russians are staying agit ,„v that it has finally dawned on them• many people hate them. I say good 1-1`;s dance. Let's get on with the amateur Galliv of 1984.
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