Here are some thoughts on the Olympics. Titled “This is illegal”, “Crawling through loopholes” and “Jumping through hoops”, I’ve tried to look at the modern Olympics and what lays behind them. They are not all about the athlete overcoming all odds and winning through, they have been distorted by the vast amounts of money involved in putting them on.
“This is illegal”, well technically unlawful I believe, the reproduction of the Olympic logo will cause buss loads of lawyers to appear at your door. It is a trademark, and trade means money, so you have to pay to use it.
And money is what “Crawling through loopholes” is all about. The Olympics is big, very big, business. From the securing of the building site with the security staff imposing bans on, legal, photography of the site, to the siting of antiaircraft missiles on the roofs of flats a lot of money is being spent to protect a building bonanza that has destroyed peoples homes, allotments and open spaces. Nothing is allowed to get in the way of money being made, and that goes for the sponsors as well, they have absolute, exclusive, rights to market their wares. So much pressure is put on athletes to win some turn to drugs, the easy option to get onto the gravy train.
But some find themselves “Jumping through hoops” to participate in their sport. From Jessie Owens who humiliated the Nazis in 1936 but was a virtual outcast at home in a segregated USA that later athletes protested about and were banned from all subsequent competition, transsexual athletes who do not fit the regulations, countries that are banned from appearing, through to the poverty that inhibits success yet acts as a spur.