Is it truly blasphemous to ponder whether or not the Olympic Games as we know them today are a load of old bollocks?

I recognize that a great many people genuinely do get excited every four years at the opportunity to see their top athletes in competition against the world’s best. But this farce of ‘Olympic spirit’ has surely gone on long enough.

The notion of ‘amateur’ athletes died years ago, and the sight of multi-millionaire Team USA basketball players secreted away from other Olympic Village athletes into their own luxury hotel accommodations has done little to quell that reality. Olympic spirit was never at play during the boycotts that beset Cold War-era Olympics, or in the tragedy of Munich, or in the corrupt behind-the-scenes briberies and inducements that lead to so many cities being chosen as Olympic hosts in the first place. And exactly how many drug cheats do we need ejected from competition until we finally recognize that notions of fair and healthy competition were dead long before we first spotted female East German athletes looking like extras from a Mr. Universe event?

Corporations litter the grim Olympic landscape with billboards and airbrushed, smiling faces, while host cities often take decades to recover from the financial costs that a Games has heaped upon them. For every genuinely inspiring moment my a non-winning athlete from a fringe sporting nation, television broadcasters outshine those achievements with news of gold, gold and more gold by heavily sponsored, multi-coached athletes contributing to their nation’s push for the false glory of dominating that all-important ‘medal tally’.

No, the Olympic ideals may have been borne from good intentions and a genuine, heartening sense of global goodwill in times past, but today I can’t see that spirit in any true, honest form. I choose to skip these London Olympics, thank you very much. I’d hazard a guess that I’ll see better examples of pure sportsmanship and spirit at my son’s local football game this weekend- albeit save for a few over-eager sideline-coach fathers. That’s an event I’ll gladly watch.

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