A woman lights the sacred flame in Ancient Olympus. Credit: AFP
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Two and a half thousand years ago the cities of Greece faced the greatest crisis in their history. The invasion force led by Xerxes, the King of Persia, in 480 BC was on a stupefying scale. Europe would witness nothing to rival it until 1944, and the summer of D-Day. The best chance of keeping the Great King at bay, it seemed to the Greek high command, was to occupy the narrow pass of Thermopylae, where the terrain would serve to neutralise the Persian weight of numbers.
Naturally, for this strategy to succeed, as many men as possible would need to march north and take up position in the pass. The wait for the Persians to arrive was a long and excruciating one. June came and went. Still the Great King did not come. July went by. Then, early in August, came the news that all Greece had been half dreading and half anticipating: the Persians were at hand.
Yet most Greeks, now that the moment of truth had finally arrived, put off marching north to Thermopylae. Only 4,000 troops from the Peloponnese ended up making the journey. The Spartans, the most formidable warriors in Greece, sent only 300. Why the delay? The question seems to have puzzled the Persians themselves. Two days it took them to clear the pass. Heroic though the defence of Thermopylae had been, and enduring though the fame of the 300 Spartans would prove to be, Xerxes knew that he had been lucky — for a larger Greek holding force might well have proved impossible to dislodge.
Accordingly, when deserters were brought into his presence, he demanded to know from them what the Greeks were up to. The answer left him even more bewildered than before. The Greeks, it turned out, were at Olympia, “celebrating athletic and equestrian competitions.” Not even a Persian invasion, it turned out, could stop the Olympic games.
Nor today has Covid stopped them. The show must go on, global pandemic or not. That the Games are opening today in a country that has very low vaccinations rates, and therefore — unsurprisingly — seems to have very little appetite for them, has been presented by the International Olympics Committee as a soaring triumph of the human spirit. “The best athletes of the world are looking forward with anticipation to make their Olympic dream finally come true.” So Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, declared in ringing tones. The implication was clear – to abandon the games would be to surrender limply to Covid. “Tokyo 2020 will give humanity faith in the future.”
It will also, of course, give the IOC $3 billion of TV revenue. The modern-day Olympic movement, although founded as a monument to amateurism, has long since mutated into a monument to capitalism. Recently, under the leadership of Bach, it has become ever more of a business. Gassy slogans about the human spirit cannot disguise what really lies behind the IOC’s insistence that the Games go ahead: profit. The Japanese Government, backed into a corner by the finest international contract lawyers that money can buy, has found it impossible to break free. The stadia may be empty, the locals resentful, the risks to public health immense; but at least, on the plus side, the IOC won’t see their insurance premiums rocket.
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SubscribeTaking the knee, trans women (geezers) allowed to compete against women.. I won’t be watching.
I shall watch the Equestrian events, only.
Hmm, OK I may do the same. But if I see ONE horse taking the knee.. I’m out.
I believe they do take the knee in the Dressage event …
The Greeks performed naked for a reason.
Buzkashi…. The Greeks would have been very pleased at such a game, and one which still is played today.
A headless dead calf or sheep is the ‘ball’ the riders on horseback, carrying small, lead tipped, whips to hit the horses, and riders – the pack of riders descends on the dead calf and leaning out and down from the saddle they grasp it up from the ground in a mass melee- teams, but also every man for himself, and then the effort is to take it to a goal post and around, scoring a point wile all the other riders, on highly trained horses who have no fear of getting into the the melee, and the fight, try to tear it from the one holding it…. There is no fenced field, and when one with the calf breaks free, and the pack of riders is heading towards the crowd the people vanish fast…. The calf gets torn to shreads eventually, so intense
It is Afghanistan’s National Game, and one which should have been shown to the Politicians before they began their time in the country – it is all for Honour, that most important thing of all in life to a Pathan, it is total of skill at horsemanship, and sheer nerve and pain tolerance, to come unseated in the pack would be the end…
To think of our petty and spoiled athletes sulking on the Prize podium, to show their disdain for their National music and flag, is so disgusting in comparison to what these events should be, it ruins the whole thing….
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=bushkashi&iax=images&ia=images
Hersch Schneider – brilliant! Thanks for encapsulating the horror of living through the triumph of wokery over Honour.
Good on ya Tom. It’s all got rather passe (e = ay as i have no digital acute accent available) and cliche (e = ayed.) Like so much else in the public sphere except for certain individuals around the World. The glorious amateur – untainted and undaunted with no fist in the air, nor weakened by bended knee has disappeared from public view.
Well I was inspired by the victory of Dr Anna Kiesenhofer in the Women’s Olympic Road Race. Which she did in the proper Olympian spirit of being an Amateur, riding as a solo athlete with no ‘Trade’ team or national team to help her, and without any whingeing about the absence of Radios. While various channels’ commentators avoided alluding to her earned Title, they made Midas-like remarks about her possibility of getting a fat professional contract. She is apparently not interested, preferring to continue with her academic career.
Dr Kiesenhofer is the first and possibly the only True Olympian of the current Tokyo Games.
Modern Olympics has not only degenerated into a monument of capitalism, but also, worse, a propaganda tool of autocratic regimes.
In communist east Germany and communist China, millions of millions of dollars are spent on young sport talents, in the hope of winning a medal to glorify the regimes. In the process hundreds, thousands of young people wasted their best years, got injured and left the sport teams semi-literate, unskilled for any job and at the bottom of the social heap. East Germany was also notorious for doping and gender fraud.
Olympics symbolises ‘the soaring of human spirit’? Fat cats at IOC, have some human decency,please!